"I've been thinking," he let out shyly, "that if I could put the price of it in some place where I could watch it, the money would do me more good...." Lessing turned on him a suddenly brightening eye.
"That's the talk--say, you know I think I could get you forty-five hundred for that farm of yours anyway." They looked at one another on the verge of things hopeful and considerable.

As Peter's car swung around the curve, suddenly they blushed, both of them, and reached out and shook hands.
That evening as Peter came home he saw Lessing buying chrysanthemums at the florist's with a happy countenance, and to master the queer pang it gave him, Peter got off the car and walked a long way out on the dim wet pavement.

He was looking at the bright picture of Lessing and the girl--she was really very pretty--and seeing instead, himself, quite the bachelor, and his lame sister taking their blameless dull way in the world.

He couldn't any more for the life of him, get a picture of himself without Ellen in it; the tapping of her crutch sounded even in the House when he visited it in his dreams.

It was well on this occasion that he had Ellen beside him, for she showed him the way presently to take it, as he knew she would take it as soon as he went home and told her--as another door by which they could enter sympathetically in the joyousness they were denied.