As Melia's husband shuffled across the grass Josiah held himself ready to spring upon him. Public or no public he would certainly do so if the little beast made any sign of insulting Maria. But as Bill Hollis came slowly and doggedly into the picture he was visited by a reluctant grace. Half way across the grass, midway between the bandstand and the alderman's lady, he took his shabby hands from his shabby pockets; a little farther on several degrees of slouch passed from the unpleasing curve of his narrow shoulders. And finally, as the silver gilt goblet was bestowed upon him by a pair of trembling hands, he ducked solemnly, the best he could do in the way of a bow, and then retired modestly, silently, respectfully, the trophy under his arm. Josiah and Aunt Gerty breathed again. Great was their relief. And so intensely had they been preoccupied with the bearing of Melia's husband, that, very luckily for Maria, they were not able to notice hers. It was well this was so. For the alderman's lady had disgraced herself on an important public occasion by allowing her eyes to fill with tears. XII Bill's first thought was to take the trophy straight home to his wife. But for various reasons he didn't obey it. Relations had grown very strained between Melia and himself. For months past she had been giving him such a bad time that there was little pleasure to be got out of his home. He was a bit of an idealist in his way. Sixteen years ago, at any rate, he had begun married life by idealizing his home and Melia. But Melia was not an idealist. She was a decidedly practical person, and, like her father, endowed with much shrewd sense. In a perverse hour she had yielded against her better judgment to the quiet persistency of William Hollis; but almost before she married him she knew it wouldn't answer. In her heart she wanted somebody better. She felt that a daughter of Josiah Munt was entitled to somebody better. And in waiving all her rights as the eldest child of a tyrannical, overbearing father, the least she could ask of the man to whose star she had pinned her faith was that he should prove himself a forcible and successful citizen. Unhappily Bill had proved to be neither. He was a wordster, a dreamer; there was nothing at the back of his rose-colored ideas. It was not that he was a vicious man. For such a nature as Melia's it had perhaps been better if he had been. She asked for the positive in man, even positive badness; anything rather than muddling mediocrity, ignoble envy of other men's prosperity and continual whinings against fate.