sewing-basket and arose.

"Rollin," she said, "I have enjoyed hearing you tell your
experiences greatly. I can say but one thing: Never in your life
have you deceived me. And you have not deceived me now."

For half an hour after this Mr. Billings sat alone, thinking.

III
OUR FIRST BURGLAR


When our new suburban house was completed I took Sarah out to
see it, and she liked it all but the stairs.

"Edgar," she said, when she had ascended to the second floor,
"I don't know whether it is imagination or not, but it seems to
me that these stairs are funny, some way. I can't understand it.
They are not a long flight, and they are not unusually steep, but
they seem to be unusually wearying. I never knew a short flight
to tire me so, and I have climbed many flights in the six years
we have lived in flats."

"Perhaps, Sarah," I said, with mild dissimulation, "you are
unusually tired to-day."

The fact was that I had planned those stairs myself, and for a
particular reason I had made the rise of each step three inches
more than the customary height, and in this way I had saved two
steps. I had also made the tread of the steps unusually narrow;