The Rose-Garden Husband

interminable story.... She held her sleepy eyes wide open by will-power, and found that a silent but evidently going clock hung in sight. Six-thirty. Then she hadn't overslept the al

by perching on "poor Allan Harrington's" bed and sending him to sleep by holding his hands and telling him children's stories. She must have fallen asleep after he did, and slid down on his shoulder. A wonder it hadn't disturbed him! She

lothes outside the door, on Allan's day couch. He came

as if she had been giving men-servants orders in her sli

anything, have you?" asked Wallis. "He hasn't slept without a break for

ping nearly three hours now! I read him to sleep, or what amounted to it. I got

aid Wallis gravely. "

p, too," she said. "Call me

he was not alone: the wistful wolfhound was curled plaintively across her bed, which he overlapped. From his nose he seemed to have been dippi

ore than shove him over to the back of the bed. "All-the beds here are so-full," she

Harrington to a quiet place beside her husband, and drawing together again the string

eping up

ting lo

ot need to

e Judgme

ort faithfully, and tried to see to it that his man Wallis was all he should be-a task which was almost hopeless from the fact that Wallis knew much more about his duties than she did, even with Mrs. Harr

Allan had been a little better ever since. Wallis had told Phyllis this. But she was inclined to think that the betterment was caused by the counter-shock of his mothe

the wolfhound and Allan and the check-book for? Where were all the things she had intended to get? The only item she had bought as yet ran, on the char

sunshine in her pocket: glorious patches, fit for a life-sized wolfhound. Perhaps he was grateful because she had ordered him

out a list in a superlat

ng of bl

ffy summer frocks w

ose-g

lf-teacher. (And a

Arabia

evenson, all

Parrish pictures full

t them in, wi

e motor-car

with a tame

amm

at might be thrown

watch-b

red satin sl

gh to put all f

powers" would cover it, she knew. Mrs. Harrington's final

e, the garden, the motor, which she put checks against, and the plain cat,

o speak to, and really owed it to herself to go. She fluffed out her hair loosely, put on her pale-green gown that had clinging lines, and pulled some daffodils through her sash. She had resolved to avoid anything somb

him, "do you think you could stand

his eyes a little more. "Wallis

he disliked her having it. She dropped down beside h

that?" she asked. "If there's

e name," he said, smiling faintl

else to call her, speaking of her. The servants, she knew, generall

ut both paws on her shoulders. "Oh, Ivan, get down, honey! I wish somebody would take a day off some time to exp

urpose. "Mother bought him, she said, because he would look so picturesque in my sick-room. She wanted him t

died grief and regret in the house had been Mrs. Harrington's, not Allan's-that he was more young and natural than she had thought, better material for cheering

t be a cripple, but he wasn't going to be part of any confounded tableau. Whereupon his mother had cried for an h

it was, that she was going to conduct a cheerfulness campaign in behalf of this listless, beautiful, darkness-locked Allan of hers. Unknowingly, she was beginning to regard him as much her property as the chec

some plans with you, Allan," she began again de

or heaven's sake! Yo

as evidently intended for a warning. Then he slipped out of the room, as if he wished her to follow soon an

ibrary smile at him. "It was mostly about things I wanted to buy for myself, an

at had to do with me. If you have plans about me, go ahead, for you know I can'

isk. Phyllis knew herself to be trustworthy. She knew that she could no more put her own pleasures before her charge's welfare than she could steal his watch. Her conscience was New-England rock. But, oh! suppose Mr. De Guenthe

strange girl wished on you this way, but truly I mean to be as good as I can, and never in

ke for the first time as a well man speaks, qui

, you know, this time five years, and what difference does it make whether I'm married or not? I don't mi

o do if I bore you is to look bored. You can, you know. You don't know how well you do it!

ould hurt me," he said indifferently. B

much more grown-up and wise than she was, and of whom she still stood a little in awe; and the little-boy Allan who had clung to her in nervous dre

smiling and rising. "She's perfectly certain carpets have to come u

d her bull-pup, into her sleeve, took her hand from his and w