on our floor--will you? We never get anything but the old, thin
towels. Of course, it's Alma's fault; but I think every one ought to
take a turn at the new towels as well as the old, don't you?"

"I'll speak to Alma," said Margaret, turning her key.

A lonely, busy autumn fellowed, and a winter of hard and thankless
work.

"I feel like a plumber's wife," smiled Margaret to Mrs. Kippam, when
in November John wrote her of a "raise."

But when he came down for two days at Christmastime, she noticed
that he was brown, cheerful, and amazingly strong. They were as shy
as lovers on this little holiday, Margaret finding that her old
maternal, half-patronizing attitude toward her husband did not fit
the case at all, and John almost as much at a loss.

In April she went up to Applebridge, and they spent a whole day
roaming about in the fresh spring fields together.

"It's really a delicious little place," she confided to Mrs. Kippam
when she returned. "The sort of place where kiddies carry their
lunches to school, and their mothers put up preserves, and everybody
has a surrey and an old horse. John's quite a big man up there."

After the April visit came a long break, for John went to Chicago in
the July fortnight they had planned to spend together; and when he
at last came to New York for another Christmas, Margaret was in bed
with a bad throat, and could only whisper her questions. So another