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been faithfal to her in heart and in deed. Time had clipped the winga of his love for Emily in hia devotion to the mother of his boys; he had quite lived down that impulsive earlier fancy, and Emily had become in his regard nothing more than a friend. It was the same with Emily's feelings for him. Possibly, had ahe found the least cause for jealousy, Joanna would almost have been better satisfied. It was in the absolute acquiescence of Emily and Shadrach in the results she herself had contrived that her discontent found nourishment.

Shadrach was not endowed with the narrow shrewdness necessary for developing a retail business in the face of many competitors. Did a customer inquire if the grocer could really recommend the wondrous substitute for eggs which a persevering bagman had forced into his stock, he would answer that ‘‘ when you did not put eggs into a pudding it was diffioult to taste them there”; and when he was asked if his “real Mocha coffee” was real Mocha, he would say, grimly, “as understood in small shops.”

One summer day, when the big brick house opposite was reflecting the oppressive sun’s heat into the shop, and nobody waa present but husband and wife, Joanna looked across at Emily’s door, where a wealthy visitor’s carriage had drawn up. Traces of patronage had been visible in Emily’s manner of late.

" Shadrach, the truth is, you are not a businessman,” his wife sadly murmured. ‘You were not brought up to shopkeeping, and it is impossible for a man to make a fortune at an occapation he has jumped into, as you did into this.”

Jolliffe agreed with her, in this ag in everything else. “ Not that Leare a rope’s end about making a fortune,” he said, cheerfully. “Iam happy enough, and we can rub on somehow.”