the domestic tiller, and now see what was happening!
Usually when Alice and Tom had dined at a restaurant it had been a special sort of merrymaking. To-night one could see with half an eye that Tom's mind was not here. He was wondering whether the children were eating their zwieback and milk. Alice, on the other hand, was wondering what they were eating, and what they were doing. They finished their meal with undue haste and returned home. All seemed as it should be. Jamie was looking at a picture book. Sara was playing with paper dolls, and Robert was studying his lessons. It might have been Alice's overwrought imagination that made her hear Laurie's voice saying:
"Whist! my darlin's, not a word!"
"Are my darlings all right?" Alice asked.
To this Robert replied, "All right, I guess."
And Sara chirped, "Grandma was in. Yes, and Mrs. Painter came, too."
"Mrs. Painter," asked Tom. "What did she come for?"
"Oh, she just came!" Sara brightly gave out. "And Mrs. Phinney came to see Laurie, too."
During this time Alice noticed that Robert was trying to check Sara's artless flow of talk.
"Who is Mrs. Phinney?" inquired Tom Marcey.
"She's just a friend of Laurie's." Sara could hold in no longer.
"Say, Father," she cried from the depths of her generous heart, "say, don't you want a piece of molasses candy and a popcorn ball? Mrs. Phinney, she makes the grandest kind!"
I think any wife would have agreed that Mr. Marcey lost his temper with needless violence at this kind remark of Sara's. He fixed his wife with an awful eye.
"It is not for this! It is not to have their stomachs
