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“But it was your work, dear.”

Mr. Decker shook his head sorrowfully. “No, Elsie, not mine. I had the chance to do it once, and I let it go. It’s done now–but not by me.”

Mrs. Decker raised her surprised, innocent eyes to his. He kissed her tenderly, and then went on in a more cheerful voice,–

“That ain’t all I was thinking of, Elsie. I was thinking that maybe you give too much of your company to that Mr. Hamilton. Not that there’s any wrong in it, to you or him; but it might make people talk. You’re the only one here, Elsie,” said the master-carpenter, looking fondly at his wife, “who isn’t talked about, whose work ain’t inspected or condemned.”

Mrs. Decker was glad he had spoken about it. She had thought so too. But she could not well be uncivil to Mr. Hamilton, who was a fine gentleman, without making a powerful enemy. “And he’s always treated me as if I was a born lady in his own circle,” added the little woman, with a certain pride that made her husband fondly smile. “But I have thought of a plan. He will not stay here if I should go away. If, for instance, I went to San Francisco to visit ma for a few days, he would be gone before I should return.”

Mr. Decker was delighted. “By all means,” he said, “go to-morrow. Jack Oakhurst is going down; and I’ll put you in his charge.”

Mrs. Decker did not think it was prudent. “Mr. Oakhurst is our friend, Joseph; but you know his reputation.” In fact, she did not know that she ought to go now, knowing that he was going the same day; but, with a kiss, Mr. Decker overcame her scruples. She yielded gracefully. Few women, in fact, knew how to give up a point as charmingly as she.

She staid a week in San Francisco. When she returned, she was a trifle thinner and paler than she had been. This she explained as the result of perhaps too active exercise and excitement. “I was out of doors nearly all the time, as ma will tell you,” she said to her husband, “and always alone. I am getting quite independent now,” she added gayly. “I don’t want any escort. I believe, Joey dear, I could get along even without you, I’m so brave!”

But her visit, apparently, had not been productive of her impelling design. Mr. Hamilton had not gone, but had remained, and called upon them that very evening. “I’ve thought of a plan, Joey dear,” said Mrs. Decker, when he had departed. “Poor Mr. Oakhurst has a miserable room at the hotel. Suppose you ask him, when he returns from San Francisco, to stop with us. He can have our spare-room. I don’t think,” she added archly, “that Mr. Hamilton will call often.” Her husband laughed, intimated that she was a little coquette, pinched her cheek, and complied. “The queer thing about a woman,” he said afterward confidentially to Mr. Oakhurst, “is, that, without having any plan of her own, she’ll take anybody’s, and build a house on it entirely different to suit herself. And dern my skin if you’ll be able to say whether or not you didn’t give the scale and measurements yourself! That’s what gets me!”

The next week Mr. Oakhurst was installed in the Deckers’ cottage. The business relations of her husband and himself were known to all, and her own reputation was above suspicion. Indeed, few women were more popular. She was domestic, she was prudent, she was pious. In a country of great feminine freedom and latitude, she never rode or walked with anybody but her husband. In an epoch of slang and ambiguous expression, she was always precise and formal in her speech. In the midst of a fashion of ostentatious decoration, she never wore a diamond, nor a single valuable jewel. She never permitted an indecorum in public. She never countenanced the familiarities of California society. She declaimed against the prevailing tone of infidelity and scepticism in religion. Few people who were present will ever forget the dignified yet stately manner with which she rebuked Mr. Hamilton in the public parlor for entering upon the discussion of a work on materialism, lately published; and some among them, also, will not forget the expression of amused surprise on Mr. Hamilton’s face, that gradually changed to sardonic gravity, as he courteously waived his point; certainly not Mr. Oakhurst, who, from that moment, began to be uneasily impatient of his friend, and even–if such a term could be applied to any moral quality in Mr. Oakhurst–to fear him.