is good of you, Lil," and Lillian Gale came into the room with outstretched hand.
"Perhaps I shouldn't have come so soon," she said, "but you see I am bound to know you, even if Dicky does spirit you away when we want you to join us."
She threw him a laughing glance as she clasped my hand.
"I am so glad you have come," I said cordially, but inwardly I fiercely resented her intrusion, as I deemed it.
But what was my horror to hear Dicky say casually:
"You've come at a most opportune time, Lil. Madge has had an offer from some woman's club to do a lecturing stunt on history, her specialty, you know, and she wants to take it. I wish you'd help me persuade her out of it."
"I cannot imagine why we should trouble Mrs. Underwood with so personal a matter," I heard myself saying faintly.
Mrs. Underwood laughed boisterously. "Why, I'm one of the family, my dear child," she said heartily. Then she looked at me keenly.
"I might have known that one man would have no chance with two women,"
Dicky growled. His tone held capitulation. I knew I had won my battle.
But was it my victory or this woman's I so detested?
"Don't let this man bully you," she advised half-laughingly. "He's perfectly capable of it. I know him. By all means accept the offer if you think it's worth while. All these husbands are a bit archaic yet, you know. They don't realize that women have joined the human race."
"Come, Dicky-bird," she rattled on as she saw his darkening face. "Don't be silly. You'll have to give in. You're just 50 years behind the times, you know."
During the remainder of Mrs. Underwood's brief call she ignored Dicky, and devoted herself to me. There is no denying the fact that she has great charm when she chooses to exercise it. Dicky, however, appeared entirely oblivious of it, sitting in moody silence until she rose to go.
"You ought to preserve that grouch," she carelessly advised, as he stood holding the door open for her. "Carefully corked in a glass jar, it ought to keep to be given to your grandchildren as a horrible example."
Dicky grinned reluctantly and bowed low as she passed out of the room with a cordial adieu to me, but no sooner had the door closed behind her than he turned to me angrily.
"Look here, Madge," he exclaimed, "are you really in earnest about taking that blasted position?"
"Why! of course I am," I answered. "It seems providential, coming just as you insist upon having the maid. I can engage one with a clear conscience now."
Dicky sprang to his feet with a muttered word that sounded suspiciously like an oath, and began to walk rapidly up and down the room, his hands behind his back, and his face dark with anger. Up and down, up and down he paced, while I, sitting quietly in my chair, waited, nerving myself for the scene I anticipated.
When it came, however, it surprised me with the turn it took. Dicky stopped suddenly in his pacing, and coming swiftly over to me, dropped on one knee beside my chair and put his arms around me.
"Sweetheart," he said softly, "I don't want to quarrel about this, nor do I wish to be unreasonable about it. But, really, it means an awful lot to me. I don't want you to do it. Won't you give it up for me?"
I returned Dicky's kiss, and held him tightly as I answered:
"Dear boy, I'll think it over very carefully. If I possibly can, I will do as you wish. But, remember, I say if I can. I haven't made you a definite promise yet."
"But you will, I know; that's my own dear girl. Good-by. I'll have to rush back to the studio now."
Dicky's tone was light and confident as he rose. Life always has been easy for Dicky. I heard him say once he never could remember the time when he didn't get his own way.
V
"ALWAYS YOUR JACK"
As soon as Dicky had left the house I cleared away the dishes and washed them and prepared a dessert for dinner. Then, finding the want advertisements of the Sunday papers, I looked carefully through the columns headed "Situations Wanted, Female."
I clipped the advertisements and fastened each neatly to a sheet of notepaper. Then I wrote beneath each one: "Please call Thursday or Friday. Ask for Mrs. Richard Graham, Apartment 4, 46 East Twenty-ninth street."
I addressed the envelopes properly, inserted the answers in the envelopes, sealed and stamped them, then ran out to the post box on the corner with them. I walked back very slowly, for there was nothing more that needed to be done, and I could put off no longer the settling of my problem.
I locked the door of my room, pulled down the shade and, exchanging my house dress for a comfortable negligee, lay down upon my bed to think things out.
I tried to put myself in Dicky's place, and to understand his reasons for objecting to my earning any money of my own. I sat upright in bed as a thought flashed across my brain. Was that the reason? Were his objections to this plan of mine what he pretended they were? Did he really fear that I might have unpleasant publicity thrust upon me, and that some of our pleasure plans might be spoiled by the weekly lecture engagement? Or was he the type of man who could not bear his wife to have money or plans or even thoughts which did not originate with him?
I resolved to find out just what motive was behind his objections. If he were willing that I should try to earn money in some other way I would gladly refuse this offer. But if he were opposed to my ever having any income of my own the issue might as well come now as later.
A loud ringing at the doorbell awakened me.
For a moment I could not understand how I came to be in bed. Then I remembered and throwing off my negligee and putting on a little afternoon gown, I twisted up my hair into a careless knot and hurried to the door. The ring had been the postman's. The afternoon newspapers lay upon the floor. With them was a letter with my former name upon it in a handwriting that I knew. It had been forwarded from my old boarding house. The superscription looked queer to me, as if it were the name of some one I had known long ago.
"Miss Margaret Spencer," and then, in the crabbed handwriting of my dear old landlady, "care of Mrs. Richard Graham."
I opened the letter slowly. It bore a New Orleans heading, and a date three days before.
"Dear little girl:
"A year is a long time between letters, isn't it? But you know I told you when I left that the chances were Slim for getting a letter back from the wild territory where I was going, and I found when I reached there that 'slim' was hardly the word. I wrote you twice, but have no hope that the letters ever reached you. But now I am back in God's country, or shall be when I get North, and of course, my first line is to you. I am writing this to the old place, knowing it will be forwarded if you have left there.
"I shall be in New York two weeks from today, the 24th. Of course I shall go to my old diggings. Telephone me there,
