taking down one of the jars, and pointing to the first line of the label. 

 Bartley read, "THE PERSIS BRAND," and then he looked at Lapham and smiled. 

 "After HER, of course," said Lapham.  "Got it up and put the first of it on the market her last birthday. She was pleased." 

 "I should think she might have been," said Bartley, while he made a note of the appearance of the jars. 

 "I don't know about your mentioning it in your interview," said Lapham dubiously. 

 "That's going into the interview, Mr. Lapham, if nothing else does. Got a wife myself, and I know just how you feel." It was in the dawn of Bartley's prosperity on the Boston Events, before his troubles with Marcia had seriously begun. 

 "Is that so?" said Lapham, recognising with a smile another of the vast majority of married Americans; a few underrate their wives, but the rest think them supernal in intelligence and capability.  "Well," he added, "we must see about that. Where'd you say you lived?" 

 "We don't live; we board. Mrs. Nash, 13 Canary Place." 

 "Well, we've all got to commence that way," suggested Lapham consolingly. 

 "Yes; but we've about got to the end of our string. I expect to be under a roof of my own on Clover Street before long. I suppose," said Bartley, returning to business, "that you didn't let the grass grow under your feet much after you found out what was in your paint-mine?" 

 "No, sir," answered Lapham, withdrawing his eyes from a long stare at Bartley, in which he had been seeing himself a young man again, in the first days of his married life.  "I went right back to Lumberville and sold out everything, and put all I could rake and scrape together into paint. And Mis' Lapham was with me every time. No hang back about HER. I tell you she was a WOMAN!" 

 Bartley laughed.  "That's the sort most of us marry." 

 "No, we don't," said Lapham.  "Most of us marry silly little girls grown up to LOOK like women." 

 "Well, I guess that's about so," assented Bartley, as if upon second thought. 

 "If it hadn't been for her," resumed Lapham, "the paint wouldn't have come to anything. I used to tell her it wa'n't the 

 Prev. P 10/309 next