Mr. Heth explained, and said that nobody was. He'd only mentioned the
possibility if the fellow ever got troublesome, which was most unlikely.
His wife was a climber--social bug, you know. "Pays to know your man,
eh, Cally?..."

"I should say! And O'Neill's wife manages him?"

"Don't they always?" said he, pinching her little pink ear. And
thereupon he bethought himself of a thoroughly characteristic quotation,
which he rendered right jovially:

"'Pins and needles, pins and needles,
When a man marries, his trouble begins,'

"As the fellow says," concluded Mr. Heth; and so departed for The
Fourth National Bank. Mrs. Heth, reminding her daughter about being
fresh for the afternoon, glided to her writing-desk in the library.
Carlisle confronted three hours of leisure before the prospective Great
Remeeting. She went to the telephone, and called up her second-best
girl-friend, Evelyn McVey. It developed that she had nothing special to
say to Evey, or Evey to her. However, they talked vivaciously for twenty
minutes, while operators reported both lines "busy" and distant people
were annoyed and skeptical.

That done, Carlisle went to the upstairs sitting-room, and sat by the
fire reading a Christmas magazine, which had come out on Guy Fawkes day,
the 5th of November. Presently she slipped off her pumps the better to
enjoy the heat: and assuredly there is nothing surprising in that. It is
moral certainty that Queens and Empresses (if we knew all) dearly love