very far into the hundreds. Too far, he perceived, for his wife's joyous
approval; he determined not to add the interest; or he believed that
Lindau would refuse the interest; he put a fine speech in his mouth,
making him do so; and after that he got Lindau employment on 'Every Other
Week,' and took care of him till he died.

Through all his melancholy and munificence he was aware of sordid
anxieties for having taken the Grosvenor Green apartment. These began to
assume visible, tangible shapes as he drowsed, and to became personal
entities, from which he woke, with little starts, to a realization of
their true nature, and then suddenly fell fast asleep.

In the accomplishment of the events which his reverie played with, there
was much that retroactively stamped it with prophecy, but much also that
was better than he forboded. He found that with regard to the Grosvenor
Green apartment he had not allowed for his wife's willingness to get any
sort of roof over her head again after the removal from their old home,
or for the alleviations that grow up through mere custom. The practical
workings of the apartment were not so bad; it had its good points, and
after the first sensation of oppression in it they began to feel the
convenience of its arrangement. They were at that time of life when
people first turn to their children's opinion with deference, and, in the
loss of keenness in their own likes and dislikes, consult the young
preferences which are still so sensitive. It went far to reconcile Mrs.
March to the apartment that her children were pleased with its novelty;
when this wore off for them, she had herself begun to find it much more
easily manageable than a house. After she had put away several barrels of
gimcracks, and folded up screens and rugs and skins, and carried them all
off to the little dark store-room which the flat developed, she perceived
at once a roominess and coziness in it unsuspected before. Then, when