The Rose-Garden Husband

e a furtive glance around to see if the children had noticed she was off guard; for if they had she knew the whole crowd might take more liberties than they ought to, and h

but the last day of the week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and coming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller, if you work in

tion on the pay-roll ran "Assistant for the Children's Department, Greenway Branch, City Public Library." Grown-up people, when she happened to run across them, called her Miss Braithwaite. But "Liberry Teacher

d New England parsonage garden full of pink roses and nice green caterpillars and girl-dreams, and the days before she was eighteen: not

to other girls; and before that in the Circulation, where it hurts your feet and you get ink on your fingers, but you see lots of funny things happening. She had started at eighteen years old, at thirty dollars a month. Now she was twenty-five, and she got all of fifty dollars, so she ought to have been a very happy Liberry Teacher indeed, and generally she was. Wh

cat; and the sounds of conflict caused by Jimsy Hoolan's desire to get the last-surviving Alger book away from John Zanowski moved her not a whit. The Liberry Teacher had stopped, for five minutes, being grown-up and responsible, and she was wishing-wishing hard and vengefully. This is

nd waved hair! Her cheeks were pink and her expression was placid, and each of her white-gloved hands held tight to a pretty picture-book child who was wriggling with wild excitement. One had yellow frilly hair and one had brown bobbed hair, and both were quaintl

ittle family went on into the theatre, and Phyllis Braithwaite hurried on back to her work, trying to think who the pretty lady could have been, to have seemed to almost remember her. Somebody who took books out of the library, doubtless. Still

inson!"

If it had been an

der than Phyllis. Phyllis, as she tried vainly to make her damp, straight hair go back the way it should, remembered hearing that Eva had married and come to this city to live. She had never heard where. And this had been Eva-Eva, by the grace of gold, radiantly complexioned, wonderfully groomed, beaut

lance at herself in the wiggly mirror, but that one had been enough for her peace of mind, supposing her to have had any l

ive-year-old, workaday face in the green glass was dreadful. What made her feel worst-and she entertained the thought with a whimsical consciousness of its impertinent vanity-was that she'd had so much more raw material than Eva! And the world had given Eva a chance because he

ttered bisque doll-no wonder she cou

you just have to cuddle dear little library children, even when they're not extra clean; and when Vera Aronsohn burst into heartbroken tears on the Liberry Teacher's

st self. And her skin, too, that should have been a living rose-and-cream, was dulled by exposure to all weathers, and lack of time to pet it with creams and powders; perhaps a little, too, by the very st

uldn't spoil its pretty oval. But her eyes-well, you can't keep your eyes as blue and luminous and childlike as they were back in the New England country, when you have been using them hard for years in a bad light. And oh, they had been such nice eyes when she was just Phyllis Narcissa at home, so long and blue

" she quoted half-aloud, and wiped

on Hill!' demanded a small citizen just here. T

uired reading for schools for three solid minutes before she bestowed

with the flashing smile for which her c

er her own happy choice, "The Adventures of Peter Rabbit," with colored pictures dotting it satisfactorily. The Liberry Teacher knew that it wa

ght unacademically. "Let he

herself went on being

isque doll!" she repea

figurine; slim and clear-cut, and a little neglected, perhaps, by its owners, and dressed in working clothes instead of th

k of working hard fifty-one weeks out of fifty-two for board and lodging and carfare and shirtwaists and the occasional society of a few girls who don't get any more o

ly thing so hard. She jumped up and dashed across the room and began frantically to shel

irl that marries them, without any trouble but taking care of a man. One man couldn't but be easier than a whole roomful of library babies. I want to be looked after, and have time to keep

ays; especially when where you were brought up rose-gardens were one of the common necessities of life; and more especially when you are tired almost to th

, and thinking about that rose-garden she wanted, with files of masseuses and manicures and French maids and me

, who are rather catty ladies, and apt to catch up unguarded remarks you make. "Anything-so long as it was a gentle

Then she collected the most uproarious of her flock around her and began telling them stories out of the "Merry Adventures of Robin Hood." It would keep the children quiet

irements. "We'll send our messenger over right away." It was