Her husband paled a little. She so seldom said anything disagreeable that he was doubly offended when she did. "I might answer that if I had better food I should digest better," he said.

"Yes, and I might answer that if your programme weren't so limited I could provide more amusing food for you. But I'd sooner admit at once that I never did have Mother's knack about things to eat, and I don't wonder my menus bore you." It was the way their small domestic squabbles usually ended—by her half contemptuously throwing him the sop he wanted.

He said, with the note of sulkiness that often marred his expiations: "No doubt I'm less easy to provide for than a glutton like Frenside—" then, furtively abstracting an egg from the dish before him: "It's a damned nuisance, having all my plans upset this way… . And a fellow I was hoping I might fit into the office permanently… ."

Halo suggested that perhaps the young man's train had been delayed or run into—that perhaps at that very moment he was lying dead under a heap of wreckage; but Tarrant grumbled: "When people break appointments it's never because they're dead"—a statement her own experience bore out.

"He's sure to turn up this afternoon," she said, as one comforts a child for a deferred treat; but the suggestion brought no solace to Tarrant. He reminded her with a certain tartness (for he liked her to remember his engagements, if he happened to have mentioned them to her) that he was taking the three o'clock train for Philadelphia, where he had an important appointment with a firm of printers who were preparing estimates for him. There was no possibility of his returning to the office that day; he might even decide to take a night train from Philadelphia to Boston, where he would probably have to spend Saturday morning, also on business connected with the review. He didn't know when he was going to be able to see Weston—and it was all a damned nuisance, especially as the young fool had given no New York address, and they had hoped to rush a Weston story into their coming number.