face, and noting for a few moments that it was losing its rounded
lines.

Her hands dropped wearily into her lap, and she began gratefully:
"I'm glad you speak so kindly to-night, Robert, for I am so nervous
and out of sorts that I couldn't have stood one bit of fault-
finding--I should have said things, and then have been sorry all day
to-morrow. Dear knows, each day brings enough without carrying
anything over. Come, read the paper to me, or tell me what you have
been thinking about so deeply, if you don't mind Merton's hearing
you. I wish to forget myself, and work, and everything that worries
me, for a little while."

"I'll read the paper first, and then, after Merton has learned his
lessons, I will tell you my thoughts--my purpose, I may almost say.
Merton shall know about it soon, for he is becoming old enough to
understand the 'why' of things. I hope, my boy, that your teacher
lays a good deal of stress on the WHY in all your studies."

"Oh, yes, after a fashion."

"Well, so far as I am your teacher, Merton, I wish you always to
think why you should do a thing or why you shouldn't, and to try not
to be satisfied with any reason but a good one."

Then I gleaned from the paper such items as I thought would interest
my wife. At last we were alone, with no sound in the room but the
low roar of the city, a roar so deep as to make one think that the
tides of life were breaking waves.