the lottery.

He built the house--farther down town and much farther from the river.
Both husband and wife found a daily delight in watching its slow rise and
progress. In the room behind the shop he still plied his art and she her
needle as they had done all their married life, with never an inroad upon
their accustomed hours except the calls of the shop itself; but on every
golden morning of that luxurious summer-land, for a little while before
the carpenters and plasterers arrived and dragged off their coats, the
pair spent a few moments wandering through and about the building
together, she with her hen-like crooning, he with his unsmiling face.

Yet they never showed the faintest desire to see the end. The contractor
dawdled by the month. I never saw such dillydallying. They only abetted
it, and when once he brought an absurd and unasked-for excuse to the
taxidermist's shop, its proprietor said--first shutting the door between
them and the wife in the inner room:

"Tek yo' time. Mo' sloweh she grow, mo' longeh she stan'."

I doubt that either Manouvrier or his wife hinted to the other the true
reason for their apathy. But I guessed it, only too easily, and felt its
pang. It was that with the occupancy and care of the house must begin the
wife's absence from her old seat beside her husband at his work.

Another thing troubled me. I did persuade him to put fittings into his
cistern which fire-engines could use in case of emergency, but he would
not insure the building.

"Naw! Luck bring me dat--I let luck take care of her."