annoyance. But an admitted cause of irritation is like the first rip in one's apparel; every movement that touches the rent extends it until the garment falls into rags.

Vivian had permitted himself the latitude of secret fault-finding, and from this to the next step it was easy.

Their first quarrel came within a week. The wonder is not that it came so soon, but that it was deferred so long. Yet, the immediate cause was absurdly trivial. They had arranged to drive to Clairmont and lunch in company with some friends of Vivian. But when the morning came he felt averse to carrying out the program. Perhaps his head ached, or he had slept ill, or the discovery that his trunk key was missing annoyed him unduly. But anyway he was out of tone.

One o'clock found him stretched out on the couch in their room yawning discontentedly over the Herald. Amanda, flitting about, suddenly became aware when her toilet was half made that he had not begun to get ready.

"If you don't hurry up I'll go off and leave you—lazy fellow!" she cried. "They talk about women being always the ones to keep people waiting. I'm sure it's the other way. I'm always ready for everything before you."

"I'm not going," said Vivian abruptly, directing a scowl toward the wall paper.

They had now been married eight days. A certain French author, renowned for his biting epigrams, remarks: "I do not believe there ever was a marriage in the world, even the union of a tiger and a panther, which would not pretend to perfect happiness for at least fifteen days after the marriage ceremony."

In this case was neither tiger nor panther; only a young man who had always lorded it prettily over the women in his family, and a girl who had been brought up to expect much deference. Perhaps in France it might have taken fifteen days for the glamour to wear off. But in America emotions exhaust themselves rapidly. Amanda, standing with one gloved hand stretched out before her, seemingly intent upon fastening the buttons, had begun to reflect.

"You ain't well," she observed coldly. "Probably you ate too much pie last night."

Now, among the trifles that grate upon the masculine mind, is having an indisposition referred to gastronomic indulgence. At such times a man is apt to consider that a wife but poorly replaces a mother.

"Amanda, I wish you would learn that all varieties of pastry don't come under the head of 'pie.' And I wish you wouldn't say 'ain't.' It's deucedly countrified."

"Oh," said Amanda. She deliberately took off her gloves and hat, and sat down upon an ottoman near the couch. Her color had arisen, and her black eyes had an ominous sparkle. "Is there anything else you wish?" She asked this aggressively. Her tone suggested that she had not forgotten that episode of the fight in the barn that lay a dozen years back. She was quite as ready to stand upon the defensive now as she had been then. But when women stand sentinel their guns go off inadvertently.

"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, Vivian Thomas!" then said Amanda. She felt that he ought to be ashamed; that his display of petulance had occurred at least a fortnight too soon; that aside from the general fact that she was in the right, as usual, he had put himself in the exceptional attitude of ill-treating a bride and trying to spoil her pleasure during the tour avowedly taken to give her pleasure.

"What of?" asked Vivian, shutting his eyes.

"Of the way you're acting," promptly answered Amanda. "If you were a little boy you'd deserve a whipping. As you're supposed to be a man——"

"Only supposed to be?" sarcastically put in the depreciated young gentleman.

"Well, act like a man, then!" said Amanda in a biting tone.

"You're acting like a shrew," he returned, not entirely without reason, for the girl-wife had worked herself up to quite a pretty rage. Yet, as is plain, the blame was his, and in his heart he knew it. But since he had evoked a display of temper he had a mind to bring her to the stool of repentance. As well now as later.

Amanda, upon her side was reminded that Vivian's mother had spoiled him, and she fancied that the time had come for her to establish the supremacy over him that was essential to the happiness of both. So mixed are the motives that direct any one of our actions that it is possible there lay side by side with this lofty determination of the spirited young woman a wish to prove her husband; to find out if he had strength of character sufficient to hold his own against her and bring her to the point he evidently aimed toward, of coaxing him into good humor. There was no suggestion of any such weakness in her next words.

"It's no use to talk sense to you," she remarked, as if considering ways and means. "Because you haven't got common sense. Ma always said that."

One can pardon reproaches provoked by the occasion, but a deliberate accusation delivered at second hand has the weight of society behind it. And the affront was the greater in this instance, in that Vivian had considered "Aunt Nellie" his firm friend. He turned a trifle pale, and rising to his feet began walking slowly up and down the floor. After a few strides he paused in front of Amanda and said:

"I guess your mother was right—if she meant I hadn't good sense when I wanted to marry you. I don't know as I've ever shown myself much of a fool, otherwise."

And then—it was only eight days since the ceremony, and they were both so young—somehow the quarrel died out, and they patched up a peace, and went to Clairmont after all, in a great hurry, and with spirits considerably ruffled. But neither of them enjoyed the day.

After that a great many things went wrong. There was money enough to pay their expenses for a month or so, but none to waste; and they wasted it. Accustomed to the use of carriages, as a matter of course neither of them thought of economizing in this line, until confronted with an appalling livery-bill. They did not know how to order a dinner à la carte, until they learned by costly experience, and the fees they bestowed upon the servants, although seemingly a trifle at the time, were matters of grave moment when the sum total of their expenditures for the month came under discussion.

It had been the plan to remain away six weeks, but upon the thirtieth day Vivian came up to his wife, who was talking with some other ladies upon the porch of the Grand Union Hotel—they were then at Saratoga—and said abruptly:

"Dear, can I speak with you a minute?"

Rather alarmed, Amanda accompanied him to a retired spot, and put herself in a listening attitude. It was an awkward minute for Vivian. He was the soul of generosity, and nothing gratified him more than to give to others pleasure, when it cost him no effort. Yet here he was in a deuce of a hole, and under the necessity of making a humiliating explanation to the person whom of all others he found it hard to confess to.

"Well?" said Amanda, rather impatiently, as he fidgeted about without saying anything.

"Well, my—dearest," said poor Vivian, with pathos, turning out an empty pocket, "we are in a fix. We've spent money a little too fast, and have only this left!" And he held up to view a five-dollar bill, and two silver quarters.

Amanda gave a gasp, and then collected her mental forces. She had a fund of practical common sense in her nature, and now when she summoned it for the first time it responded to call. The first impression her husband's confidence made