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She spoke quietly. “I think it would be a pity for you not to marry, Nannie.”

“I don’t see why. You aren’t married, Mary.”

“No.”

“And Mr. Knox says that unless a girl can marry a man who can lift her up she had better stay single.”

The same old arguments! “What does he mean by ‘lift her up,’ Nannie?”

“Well”–Nannie laughed self-consciously–“he says that any one as pretty and refined as I might marry anybody; that I must be careful not to throw myself away.”

“Would it be throwing yourself away to marry Dick?”

“It might be. He looked all right to me before I went into the office. But after you’ve seen men like Mr. Knox–well, our kind seem–common.”

Mrs. Ashburner was calling that Dick McDonald was down-stairs. Nannie, powdering her nose with Mary’s puff, was held by the earnestness of the other woman’s words.

“Let Dick love you, Nannie. He’s such a dear.”

Dick was, Nannie decided before the evening was over, a dear and a darling. He had brought her a box of candy and something else in a box. Mrs. Ashburner had shown him into the dining-room, which she and Nannie used as a sitting-room when the meals were over. The boarders occupied the parlor and were always in the way.

“Say, girlie, see here,” Dick said as he brought out the box; and Nannie had gazed upon a ring which sparkled and shone and which looked, as Dick said proudly, “like a million dollars.”

“I wanted you to have the best.” His arm went suddenly around her. “I always want you to have the best, sweetheart.”

He kissed her in his honest, boyish fashion, and she took the ring and wore it; and they went to the play in a rosy haze of happiness, and when they came home he kissed her again.

“The sooner you get out of that office the better,” he said. “We’ll get a little flat, and I’ve saved enough to furnish it.”

Nannie was lighting the lamp under the percolator. Mrs. Ashburner had left a plate of sandwiches on one end of the dining-room table. Nannie was young and Mrs. Ashburner was old-fashioned. Her daughter was not permitted to eat after-the-theatre suppers in restaurants. “You can always have something here.”

“Don’t let’s settle down yet,” Nannie said, standing beside the percolator like a young priestess beside an altar. “There’s plenty of time—“

“Plenty of time for what?” asked her lover. “We’ve no reason to wait, Nannie.”

So Dick kissed her, and she let him kiss her. She loved him, but she would make no promises as to the important day. Dick went away a bit puzzled by her attitude. He wanted her at once in his home. It hurt him that she did not seem to care to come to him.

It was a cold night, with white flakes falling, and the policeman on the beat greeted Dick as he passed him. “It is a nice time in the morning for you to be getting home.”

“Oh, hello, Tommy! I’m going to be married. How’s that?”

“Who’s the girl?”

“Nannie Ashburner.”

“That little redhead?”

“You’re jealous, Tommy.”

“I am; she’ll cook sausages for you when you come home on cold nights, and kiss you at your front door, and set the talking machine going, with John McCormack shouting love songs as you come in.”

Dick laughed. “Some picture, Tommy. And a lot you know about it. Why don’t you get married and try it out?”

Tommy, who was tall and ruddy and forty, plus a year or two, gave a short laugh. “I might find somebody to cook the sausages, but there’s only one that I’d care to kiss.”

“So that’s it. She turned you down, Tommy?”

“She did, and we won’t talk about it.”

“Oh, very well. Good-night, Tommy.”

“Good-night.”

So Dick passed on, and Tommy Jackson beat his hands against his breast as he made his way through the whirling snow, his footsteps deadened by the frozen carpet which the storm had spread.

Mary Barker was delighted when Nannie told of her engagement to Dick. She talked it over with Mrs. Ashburner. “It will be the best thing for her.”