She gave him a little look which he obligingly took as a guerdon for this speech, and languidly held out her bracelets. As he stood clasping them on her arms, she quietly eyed him over from head to foot. “I don’t know of a man who has your figure,” said she with a certain tone of pride in her voice; “it is well you married a wife who does not look altogether inferior beside you.” Then as he bowed with mock appreciation of the intended compliment, added with her usual inconsequence, “I dare say it would give me something to interest myself in. I don’t suppose she has a decent thing to wear, and the fact of her being a dark beauty would lend quite a new impulse to my inventive faculty. Mrs. Walker has a daughter with black eyes, but dear me, what a guy she does make of her!” With a sigh Mr. Sylvester turned to the window where he stood looking out at the heavy flakes of snow falling with slow and fluctuating movement between him and the row of brown stone houses in front. Paula considered as a milliner’s block upon which to try the effect of clothes! “Even Mrs. Fitzgerald with all her taste don’t know how to dress her child,” proceeded his wife, with a hurried, “Be still, Cherry!” to the importunate bird in the cage. “Now I should take as much pride in dressing any one under my charge as I would myself, provided the subject was likely to do credit to my efforts.” And finding the bird incorrigible in his shrill singing, she moved over to the cage, where she stood balancing her white finger for the bird to peck at, with a pretty caressing motion of her lip, the little Geraldine of the wistful blue eyes, had never seen. “You are welcome to do what you please in such matters,” was her husband’s reply. He was thinking again of that same little Geraldine; a fall of snow like the present always made him think of her and her innocent query as to whether God threw down such big flakes to amuse little children. “I give you _carte blanche_,” said he with sudden emphasis. Mrs. Sylvester paused in her attentions to the bird to give him a sharp little look which might have aroused his surprise if he had been fortunate enough to see it. But his back was towards her, and there was nothing in the languidly careless tone with which she responded, to cause him to turn his head. “I see that you would really like to have me entertain the child; but—” She paused, pursing up her lips to meet the chattering bird’s caress, while her husband in his impatience drummed with his fingers on the pane. —“I must see her before I decide upon the length of her visit,” continued she, as weary with the sport she drew back to give herself a final look in the glass. “Will you please to hand me that shawl, Edward.”