There was a Papa Manning, but he went early and came late from his work, too early and late to enter the story as an active factor; one of those busy men who do business in the city and live in suburban towns for the sake of health and purer air for the children; but Mr. Harding did not know this, and supposed his new neighbor to be a widow, and cherished suspicions accordingly which not even her sweet voice could quite allay. “Oh, mamma, come quick. The man has fallen,” screamed Barbara one day, as she ran in to her mother, her golden curls flying, her blue eyes full of fright. “What man, Barbie dear?” Mrs. Manning was in the kitchen making bread, and a man was an indefinite ingredient to enter into the delicate operation without proper credentials. “The old man, mamma. The fence man--he fell right down and groaned.” A neighbor in distress--that was quite another matter, and Mrs. Manning ran out hastily, drying her hands on her apron. “I’ve sprained my ankle, I guess,” growled Mr. Harding, nursing his wounded leg with a white face full of angry impatience. “Just a bit of a stone, but enough to turn that confounded weak bone of mine. I feel like a baby, ma’am, to be upset by such a trifle.” “Lean on me, sir, and I will help you to rise,” said Mrs. Manning; but at the first attempt the poor old gentleman nearly fainted. Fortunately, there were men near at hand, and soon Mr. Harding was carried into his home by strong hands, and a physician summoned. It would be an exaggeration to say that Mr. Harding submitted to suffering with sweet resignation. In his best days gentle Mrs. Harding needed all her stock of patience to endure him when he was ill, and his natural proclivities had been reinforced by years of loneliness and self-indulgence. The housekeeper was at her wits’ end, and strongly inclined to resign her situation before the end of the first week. “Sure, ma’am, he’s that cranky there’s no living with him at all,” she confided to Mrs. Manning, who had brought in a bit of her own delicate cookery to tempt his capricious appetite. “I make his toast and his coffee of a mornin’, and he’s ready to eat me when it’s on his table because the coffee ain’t a-bilin’ and a-sissin’ hot, an’ the egg maybe has been cooked ten seconds longer than his wife used to cook it for him.” “Let me go in and prepare his table while you get the food ready,” Mrs. Manning suggested. She had waited on just such an invalid once in her lifetime, and had ideas. “All right, ma’am. I’ll be right glad of a little help, for he do try my patience all to frags.” Mrs. Manning ran home quickly, and returned bringing a dainty tea cloth and a bouquet of her window flowers in a delicate glass vase, and, going into the dining room, she soon had the little invalid table a very poem of neatness and elegance. “Mrs. Harrihan never set that table, I’ll be bound,” he said, gruffly, as Mrs. Manning carried it to his bedside.