Mrs. Dibbott's flexible fingers curved and met. "Why should he be? We haven't done anything for him, except allow him to shoulder the town debt. And there isn't a woman alive who means anything to him, in one sense. He's in love--but with his work. There's no room for one of us, and, if he had a wife we'd only discuss her like a lot of cats. Let's be honest--you both know we would." The others laughed and went their way, Mrs. Bowers to the big house near the station. It had a new porch and an iron fence and was freshly painted. In former days it never suggested personal resources as it did now. A little later Mrs. Manson turned into the gravel walk that led to the small stone annex of the big stone jail. Instead of going upstairs, she stopped at her husband's office and knocked, as she always did. "Come in," boomed a deep voice. Manson was at his desk and still in his Sunday best. He had taken the flower out of his buttonhole and laid it on a printed notice of the next assize court. She stood looking at him, their faces almost level--such was his great bulk. "Peter," she said gravely, "I want to talk to you." Something in her manner impressed him and he pushed back his chair. "What is it?" "We don't seem to have much time to talk nowadays." "There's no reason we shouldn't." "That's just it--but we don't. Now I want to ask you something and, Peter, you mustn't put me off--as you always do. "It's about ourselves," she went on, with a long breath, "but principally about you--and it concerns the children. Everything's changed and you're not what you used to be and something has come between us. I don't feel any more that we're the most important things in your life--as I used to." He shook his head grimly. "You're all more important than ever, if you only knew it." Manson had a faint sense of injustice. It was for them he was wading through depths of anxiety. "You're shortly going to get the surprise of your life," he added with a note of triumphant conviction. "Is it money?" she said slowly. He nodded. "Yes, a pile of it." "I don't want any more money, Peter, I'd sooner have you." The little woman's voice was very pleading. "Look here, Barbara," he exploded, "I've made nearly thirty thousand dollars out of real estate. I got the money, you understand, but the game was too stiff and took too much time, so I put that and what else I could raise into stock--in Toronto. I've already made twenty thousand more, that's fifty, and the last twenty was without any effort or time on my part. I've only got to leave it alone for another year, and I'll pull out with an even hundred thousand and retire and devote the rest of my time to you and the children. Isn't that fair enough?" "Do you say that you have already made fifty thousand dollars?" She was staring at him with startled and incredulous eyes. The sum staggered her. "Yes," he chuckled contentedly.