Lizzie herself, on the day in question, was engaged in a more arduous task than the study of the morning’s news.  She had neverunlearned the habit of orderly activity, and the trait she least understood in her husband’s character was his way of letting the loose ends of life hang as they would.  She had been disposed at first to ascribe this to the chronic incoherence of his first menage; but now she knew that, though he basked under therule of her beneficent hand, he would never feel any active impulse to further its work.  He liked to see things fall into place about him at a wave of her wand; but his enjoyment of her household magic in no way diminished his smiling irresponsibility, and it was with one of its least amiable consequences that his wife and her friend were now dealing.

Before them stood two travel-worn trunks and a distended portmanteau, which had shed their contents in heterogeneous heapsover Lizzie’s rosy carpet.  They represented the hostages left byher husband on his somewhat precipitate departure from a New Yorkboarding-house, and indignantly redeemed by her on her learning, in a curt letter from his landlady, that the latter was not disposedto regard them as an equivalent for the arrears of Deering’s board.

Lizzie had not been shocked by the discovery that her husband had left America in debt.  She had too sad an acquaintance with the economic strain to see any humiliation in such accidents; but it offended her sense of order that he should not have liquidated his obligation in the three years since their marriage.  He took her remonstrance with his usual disarming grace, and left her to forward the liberating draft, though her delicacy had provided him with a bank-account which assured his personal independence.  Lizzie had discharged the duty without repugnance, since she knewthat his delegating it to her was the result of his good-humored indolence and not of any design on her exchequer.  Deering was not dazzled by money; his altered fortunes had tempted him to no excesses:  he was simply too lazy to draw the check, as he had been too lazy to remember the debt it canceled.

“No, dear!  No!” Lizzie lifted the Chelsea figure higher.  “Can’t you find something for him, Andora, among that rubbish over there?  Where’s the beaded bag you had in your hand just now?  I don’t think it could hurt him to lick that.”

Miss Macy, bag in hand, rose from her knees, and stumbled through the slough of frayed garments and old studio properties.  Before the group of mother and son she fell into a raptured attitude.

“Do look at him reach for it, the tyrant!  Isn’t he just like the young Napoleon?”

Lizzie laughed and swung her son in air.  “Dangle it before him, Andora.  If you let him have it too quickly, he won’t care for it.  He’s just like any man, I think.”

Andora slowly lowered the shining bag till the heir of the Deerings closed his masterful fist upon it.  “There—­my Chelsea’ssafe!” Lizzie smiled, setting her boy on the floor, and watchinghim stagger away with his booty.