"Shirley," he pleaded, "don't take it so. Our plans _were_ good. It was only pull that beat us. d.i.c.k told me--"

The eyes did not change. "It doesn't matter why, does it? They didn't take them--that's all. What difference does it make if things are good when n.o.body will buy them? And I had hoped--"

"Dear, don't take it so," he repeated. "We must be brave. This is only a test--the hardest of all. If we're brave and keep hanging on--you remember what we used to say--"

She laughed, not her old beautiful laugh, but a shrill outpouring of her bitter disappointment.

"Oh, we said a lot of silly things. We were fools. I didn't know what it would be like." Anger--yes, and even hate--were unmistakable in that moment. She sat up sharply. "And, David, you've got to do something to change it. I'm tired of it all--sick and tired of scrimping and worrying and wearing made-over dresses and being--just shabby genteel. You've got to do something."

Every word was a knife in his heart. But he could not be angry with her; he was thinking of her disappointment.

"But, dear, I'm doing all I can. How can I--"

"You can get a position somewhere and at least have a steady income that would--"

"Why, Shirley, you don't mean--give up my profession? You _couldn't_ mean that!"

"I mean just that. It would give us a steady income at least."

"But I can't give it up. There's more than money to working. There's being in the work you want to do and are fitted for--"

"Ah!" She turned on him fiercely. "I thought you cared more for your work than for your family. Now I know it. You would keep us poor, just so you can do the things you like to do. And what right have you to think you're fitted for it? Why can't you be sensible and see what everybody else sees--that as an architect you are--"

"Shirley!"

But she said it.

"--a failure."

For a little he stared blindly at her. All other aches were as nothing beside this. . . . Then something within, that had sustained him since he left the office, snapped, gave way. His head and shoulders sagged forward. With a weary gesture he turned and went into the living-room.

That storm, too, pa.s.sed. It had been more than half the hysteria of shattered hope. She had hardly known what she was saying. Now she remembered his eyes as she had dealt her thrust. She was a little frightened at what she had done. She waited nervously for him to come back to her; always David had been first to mend their quarrels, and Shirley thought her kisses balm to heal all wounds.

But he did not come back. In the living-room was a heavy silence.

At last she went softly to the door. He was standing by the table, still in the broken att.i.tude, with the same dazed eyes. He did not see her.

"David!"

He did not seem to hear. She went to him and put an arm around his shoulder.

"David, I didn't mean to be nasty. It really isn't your fault. I didn't mean--"

The sound of her voice brought him out of his daze. He shrank from her touch and, turning, regarded her with a queer new look that held her from him. After a little the sense of her words seemed to come to him.

"I think you did mean it," he said wearily. "And I think--I think you are quite right."

CHAPTER IV

TO THE RESCUE

In the morning the world, strangely enough, was outwardly the same.

Even the sun had the bad taste to shine, as though a black shadow were not on their hearts.

They went through the routine of bath and toilet and breakfast. David glanced over his newspaper and romped a bit with Davy Junior. And because he kissed her as he left for the day, Shirley supposed that the scene of the night before had been filed away with their other tiffs, in a remote pigeonhole labeled "To Be Forgotten." She was glad of that.

"And maybe," she thought hopefully, "it was a good thing I said that to him. David is clever and good and dear and all that, but the trouble is he lacks ambition and push. He needs bracing up and to take things more seriously. Perhaps it will be just as well if I take the reins for a while."

Her first act as whip was to write a long letter to Aunt Clara.

David, not guessing that the reins had been transferred to Shirley's hands--not guessing, in fact, that they had ever been out of Shirley's hands--was trudging listlessly, not to his office, but to Jim Blaisdell's bank. His note fell due that day.

"Same old story," he told Jim. "I'd like to renew, if you don't mind."

Jim fingered the note thoughtfully.

"Davy," he said at last, "don't you think it's about time to clean this up? It's been running a good while."

David flushed and his head went up. "Of course, if you'd rather not indorse--"

"Don't be a fool, Davy. It isn't that. There's nothing Mrs. Jim and I wouldn't do for you and Shirley, and you know it. What I mean is, debt's a bad habit. It grows on you and you get to a point where it doesn't worry you as it ought. And it leads to other bad habits--living beyond one's means, and so on."

David's prideful pose collapsed suddenly. "I know," he said wearily.

"I'd like to clean this note up. It worries me quite enough. But the fact is--the fact is, I'm strapped and can't. We've been living from hand to mouth for a good while. And it begins to look"--David's laugh went to Jim's heart--"as if both hand and mouth would be empty soon."

"It's really as bad as that?"

"Worse than that."

Jim slowly scrawled his name across the back of a new note. David got up and crossed the office, fixing his eyes--which saw not--on a flashlight photograph of the last bankers' a.s.sociation banquet. He cleared his throat vigorously.

"It's worse than that. Jim--" He paused.

"Yes?"

"Jim, you don't happen to know any one with a job--living salary attached--concealed about his person, do you?"

"What!"

Jim whirled around in his swivel chair and stared hard at David's back.

David continued his regard of the bankers' a.s.sociation banquet. "This is you in the corner, isn't it?-- Because, if you know of any such job I'd be glad to take it over."

"In your own line, of course?"

"In any line. Preferably _not_ in my line."