trembling, too, and laughing. 

 "Will I wait!" called back the puffing O'Malley, every bit of the Irish in him beaming from his eyes.  "I'll be there when you get back as sure as your name's McBuck." 

 From his pocket he took a round, silver Western dollar and, still running, tossed it to the toothy Sam. That peerless porter caught it, twirled it, kissed it, bowed, and grinned afresh as the train glided out of the shed. 

 Emma, flushed, smiling, flew up the aisle. 

 Buck, listening to her laughing, triumphant account of her hairbreadth, harum-scarum adventure, frowned before he smiled. 

 "Emma, how could you do it! At least, why didn't you send back for me first?" 

 Emma smiled a little tremulously. 

 "Don't be angry. You see, dear boy, I've only been your wife for a week. But I've been Featherloom petticoats for over fifteen years. It's a habit." 

 Just how strong and fixed a habit, she proved to herself a little more than a week later. It was the morning of their first breakfast in the new apartment. You would have thought, to see them over their coffee and eggs and rolls, that they had been breakfasting together thus for years—Annie was so at home in her new kitchen; the deft little maid, in her crisp white, fitted so perfectly into the picture. Perhaps the thing that T. A. Buck said, once the maid left them alone, might have given an outsider the cue. 

 "You remind me of a sweetpea, Emma. One of those crisp, erect, golden-white, fresh, fragrant sweetpeas. I think it is the slenderest, sweetest, neatest, trimmest flower in the world, so delicately set on its stem, and yet so straight, so independent." 

 "T. A., you say such dear things to me!" 

 No; they had not been breakfasting together for years. 

 "I'm glad you're not one of those women that wears a frowsy, lacy, ribbony, what-do-you-call-'em-boudoir-cap—down to breakfast. They always make me think of uncombed hair. That's just one reason why I'm glad." 

 "And I'm glad," said Emma, looking at his clear eyes and steady hand and firm skin, "for a number of reasons. One of them is that you're not the sort of man who's a grouch at breakfast." 

 

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