"You wanted me--you and Lillie both wanted me to stand between you.

You couldn't endure each other's company for a day. It would bore you to death."

"You are right," he said simply. "It would bore me. I don't know about Lillie."

"Well, I can tell you," said Nannie, speaking in no uncertain tone.

"You are just as uninteresting to her as she is to you."

He caught his breath.

"You are complimentary, I must say."

"I know all about it. It's something like this with Steve and me. We don't bore each other, but we don't know what to say."

"Well, what are you going to do about it?"

Nannie sat silent for a moment. Evidently she was revolving matters mentally. Finally she turned to her companion, and with a roguish smile, which shone like a sunbeam out from overhanging curls, said:

"I suppose I'll have to 'perk up' a little."

"I don't speak Hindoostanee," he replied.

"Well, Steve's above me, you know."

He nodded, but Nannie took no offense. He was thinking. "That's our trouble. I'm above Lillie."

"And I must try to reach him somehow."

"If Lillie would do that----" he began, but Nannie cut him short.

"It's not Lillie, it's _you_! Lillie is above you!"

Again he caught his breath, this time with a gasp, but he was forced to be silent. It would be a strange man indeed who could enter into an argument to prove his wife inferior to himself. He might be thoroughly convinced of this; might even have taken it for granted that others realized the fact, but he could hardly have the face to bring his voluminous arguments on this point to the attention of an outsider.

"I know what you're thinking," said Nannie, and she looked uncanny again. "I can't say these things as well as some people could, but you think because you know books you're better than Lillie. The books can't be the first things, because there must always be men before there can be books; and there must always be some real things, true things, before there can be men. These were there first. The books don't make them, but just refer to them, and the people that have the real things are higher than the books. That's what makes Lillie higher than you."

The man sat thinking for a few moments, then he tried to laugh.

"Really, Nannie," he said, "if one were ill with that horrid disease called Conceit, a quiet half hour with you on the deck of a boat would restore him to health."

Nannie gazed at him defiantly, but said nothing.

"No, I'll tell you, little one, how it all came about," he said rather patronizingly. "Lillie and I married when we were boy and girl. She was seventeen and I was twenty. Lillie was very pretty and that attracted me, and I--well, I don't know just what she saw in me!"

"I've often wondered," said Nannie.

He gave one look of blank amazement and then dropped his hands in dismay.

"Well, I suppose you were more interesting then than you are now,"

Nannie went on comfortingly.

"I hope so," he said humbly, "but we neither of us knew the other.

Our tastes were not formed; our characters were not matured. I grew one way, she grew another; now we care for entirely different things, and as a result we are walking through life together and each is utterly alone."

He was looking off over the big lake now. He had forgotten the annoyances and unpleasant surprises of their conversation. He no longer saw Nannie. A dreary never-ending waste was all that held his mental vision.

Nannie's voice recalled him.

"That's no excuse," she insisted.

He started like a man rudely awakened.

"Who thought of making excuses?" he said rather gruffly.

But down in his heart lay the testimony that convicted him. By this it was proven that he had for thirteen years been excusing himself.

"If you would take an interest you could do something for Lillie and she could do something for you."

He did not jest this away. He was taking an interest now and doing some humiliating thinking, and as a result of all this he stood before himself in a clear, new light, in which it could readily be seen that he was less in need of sympathy than of pardon.

On her way home that afternoon Nannie called at Mrs. Earnest's house, and was boisterously welcomed by the two little ones of the family, Mamie and Jim.

"A story! A story!" they shouted.

"Oh, I can't," said Nannie. "I haven't any in my head."

"Yes, you must! You promised!" urged Jim in an extremely moral tone (he himself was a shocking transgressor in the matter of promises).

"You promised! You know you did! You've got to!"

"Well, what shall it be about?"

"Indians!" screamed Jim, "and let them do a lot of killing!"

"No. I want a kitty story," said Mamie.

"I won't have a kitty story--I want a b.l.o.o.d.y Indian story!" said Jim stoutly.

"I don't know any b.l.o.o.d.y Indian story, and I wouldn't tell one if I did," said Nannie in her abrupt, decisive way.

"I won't listen, then," pouted Jim.

"Very well. You may go to Kamchatka if you like. Mamie and I are going to have a kitty story."

Mamie cuddled up to Nannie, while Master Jim stalked out of the room.

It was observed, however, that he was not above taking up a squatter's claim in the hall and listening through the crack of the door.

"Once upon a time," Nannie began in the old way so fascinating to children--"once upon a time there lived a dear little kitty."

Just at this point the front door opened and Mr. Earnest walked in.