in?"

"Why, yes, I guess I will, thank you," faltered Bartley, in the
irresolution of his disappointment. "I hope I sha'n't disturb you."

"Come right into the sitting-room. She won't be gone a great while, now,"
said Mrs. Gaylord, leading the way to the large square room into which
a door at the end of the narrow hall opened. A slumberous heat from a
sheet-iron wood-stove pervaded the place, and a clock ticked monotonously
on a shelf in the corner. Mrs. Gaylord said, "Won't you take a chair?" and
herself sank into the rocker, with a deep feather cushion in the seat, and
a thinner feather cushion tied half-way up the back. After the more active
duties of her housekeeping were done, she sat every day in this chair with
her knitting or sewing, and let the clock tick the long hours of her life
away, with no more apparent impatience of them, or sense of their dulness,
than the cat on the braided rug at her feet, or the geraniums in the pots
at the sunny window. "Are you pretty well to-day?" she asked.

"Well, no, Mrs. Gaylord, I'm not," answered Bartley. "I'm all out of sorts.
I haven't felt so dyspeptic for I don't know how long."

Mrs. Gaylord smoothed the silk dress across her lap,--the thin old black
silk which she still instinctively put on for Sabbath observance, though it
was so long since she had worn it to church. "Mr. Gaylord used to have it
when we were first married, though he aint been troubled with it of late
years. He seemed to think then it was worse Sundays."

"I don't believe Sunday has much to do with it, in my case. I ate some
mince-pie and some toasted cheese last night, and I guess they didn't agree
with me very well," said Bartley, who did not spare himself the confession