sion."
"Have you, indeed?"
Mr. Roberts spoke heartily, and seemed by no means dismayed,--only a
trifle perplexed as to details.
"How can we manage it, Flossy? My prison class takes me in an opposite
direction at the same hour, you know."
"Yes, I thought of that; I propose to ask Mr. Ried to call for me, and
show me the way, and vouch for my good intentions after I reach there.
Do you suppose he will do it?" She looked smilingly from her husband to
young Ried, and both waited for his answer.
"I obey directions," he said, bowing respectfully to Mr. Roberts. "Am I
to have the honor of being detailed for that service to-morrow?"
"So Mrs. Roberts says," was the good-humored reply, and then the
merchant took his wife away to their waiting carriage that had drawn up
before the door, leaving Alfred Ried, if the truth must be told, in a
fume.
"Much she knows what she is talking about!" he said, jerking certain
boxes ou-
t of their places on the shelves, and then banging them back
again, seeming to suppose that he was by this process putting his
department in order for closing. "Little bit of a dressed-up doll! They
will tear her into ribbons, metaphorically, if not literally, before
this time to-morrow! She thinks, because she is the wife of Evan
Roberts, the great merchant, she can go anywhere and do anything, and
that people will respect her. She has never had anything to do with a
set of fellows who care less than nothing about money and position,
except to be ten times more insolent and outrageous in their conduct
than they would if she had less of it! I shall feel like a born idiot in
presenting this pretty little doll to teach that class! Mr. Durant will
think I have lost what few wits I had! What can possess the woman to
want to try? It is just because she has no conception of what she is
about! But Mr. Roberts must know--I w-