THE piano remained at the church several days, for the revival effort was too successful to be discontinued. Night after night Grace played for saints and sinners, and the minister, who was far too honest to stretch the truth for the sake of a compliment, told her that the playing drew more penitents than his prayers and sermons. Caleb remained faithful to his duties at the store every day, but the sound of the church bell in the evening made him so manifestly uneasy, and eager to respond, that Philip volunteered to look after all customers and loungers who might come in before the customary time for closing. But customers and loungers were few; for the church was temporarily the centre of interest to all of the good and bad whose evenings were free. There was no other place for Philip himself to go after the store was closed, for was not his wife there? Besides, the work soon began to tell on Grace; for the meetings were long, and the air of the tightly packed little church became very stifling, so Philip sometimes relieved Grace so that she might go to the door for fresh air.

"Do you know what you two have done, with your pianner-playin'?" asked Caleb, when the revival concluded. "You've not only snatched a lot of sinners that have been dodgin' ev'rybody else for years, but folks is so grateful to you that four or five customers of other stores are goin' to give you their trade the comin' year. I was sure 'twould work that way, but I didn't like to tell you."

"I'm glad you didn't; for if you had, the music would have stopped abruptly. There are places to draw the line in advertising one's business,—my business,—and the church is one of them."

"Good! That's just the way I thought you'd feel, but I'm mighty glad to know it for sure. Church singin' 'll be mighty dismal, though, when you take that pianner back home."

As Caleb spoke, he looked beseechingly at Philip, who utterly ignored the look and maintained an impassive face. Then Caleb transferred his mute appeal to Grace, who looked troubled and said:—

"There ought to be some way out of it."

"Where there's a will, there's a way," Caleb suggested.

Philip frowned, then laughed, and said:—

"Suppose you think up a way—but don't let there be any delay about getting the piano back to the house."

"Well, it's a means of grace at the church."

"So it is at home, and I need all the means of grace I can get, particularly those that are nearest home, while I am breaking myself in to a new business."

Caleb had the piano brought back to the parlor, but he reverted to it again and again, in season and out of season, until Philip told Grace that there was no doubt that his uncle was right when he wrote that Caleb would sometimes insist on being helped with projects of his own.

"That wasn't all," Grace replied. "He wrote also that he advised you to give Caleb his way at such times, or your life would be made miserable until you did, and that the cost of Caleb's projects would not be great."

"H'm! I wonder if uncle knew the cost of a high-grade upright piano? Besides, I need all my time and wits for the business, and Caleb's interruptions about that piano are worrying the life out of me. To make matters worse, there's a new set of commercial travellers coming in almost every day—this is the season, while country merchants are beginning to get money, in which they hope to make small sales for quick pay, and they take a lot of my time."

"You ought to have a partner—and you have one, you know—to see those people for you; and she will do it, if you'll let her."

"My partner knows that she may and shall do whatever she likes," said Philip, "but, dear girl, 'twould be like sending a sheep among wolves to unloose that horde of drummers upon you."

"I've had to deal with men, in some city stores in which I worked," Grace replied, "and some of them reminded me of wolves—and other animals; but I succeeded in keeping them in their places. I know the private costmarks on all of our goods, and I know the qualities of many kinds of goods better than you or Caleb, and both of you will be within call for consultation whenever I'm puzzled; so let me try. 'Twill give me an excuse to spend all of my spare time in the store; so whenever a drummer comes in, you can refer him to me. Say I'm the buyer for the concern. 'Twill sound big; don't you think so?"

"Indeed I do! I wonder where a young woman got such a head for business."

"Strange, isn't it," Grace replied, with dancing eyes which had also a quizzical expression, "as she's been several years behind counters, great and small, and listened to scores of buyers and drummers haggle over fractions of a cent in prices?"

"And for about that much time," said Philip, reminiscently, "her husband was a mere clerk and correspondent, yet thought himself a rising business man! Have your own way, partner—managing partner, I ought to say."

The next day was a very busy one, yet Caleb found time to say something about instrumental music as a means of grace in churches, and to get a sharp reply. Several commercial travellers came in and were astonished at being referred to a handsome, well-dressed young woman. Grace disposed of them rapidly and apparently without trouble. When husband and wife sat down to supper, Philip said:—

"How did the managing partner get along to-day?"

"I bought very little," Grace replied.

"You saved Caleb and me a lot of time. I've never seen Caleb so active and spirited as he has been this afternoon. It made me feel guilty, for I was rude to him this morning for the first time. Just when I was trying to think my hardest about something, he brought up again the subject of the church and the piano."

"Poor Caleb! But he won't do it again, for I've settled the matter."

"You've not been tender-hearted enough to give up the piano?"

"Oh, no, but I—we, I mean—have taken the county agency for a cabinet-organ firm."

"I see—e—e! And you're going to torment the church into buying one, and you and Caleb are going to get up strawberry festivals and such things to raise the money, and the upshot will be that I'll have to subscribe a lot of cash to make up the deficiency. Ah, well, peace will be cheap at—"

"Phil, dear, don't be so dreadfully previous. The bargain is that the firm shall send us, without charge, a specimen instrument, which I've promised to display to the best advantage, and I've also promised to give elementary instruction to every one who manifests interest in it."

"Grace Somerton! The house will be full from morning till night. Country people will throng about such an instrument like children about a hand-organ. 'Twill be the end of your coming into the store to talk to the drummers, or even to see me."

"Oh, Phil! Where are your wits? I'm going to have the organ kept at the church, and let the most promising would-be learners and possible buyers do their practising there. The organ firm sells on instalments; we'll guarantee the instalments, for I'll select the buyers—who will want only smaller instruments—from among women who bring us chickens and butter and eggs and feathers and such things. So the church will be sure of an instrument more appropriate to congregational singing than a piano, and our piano won't be coveted, and we will make a little money, and by the time the next revival season arrives there will be at least a few people who can play, and perhaps some who are accustomed to closed windows and stuffy air, and won't get splitting headaches and lose five pounds of weight in a week, as I did."

"Allow me to catch my breath!" said Philip. "Give me some tea, please, quick!—no milk or sugar. I hope 'tis very strong. You've planned all this, yet there you sit, as natural and unassuming as if you'd never thought of anything but keeping house and being the sweetest wife in the world!"

"Thank you, but shouldn't sweetness have any strength and character? And what is business for, I should like to know, but to enable women to keep house—and keep their pianos, if they have any?"

"Caleb," said Philip, on returning to the store, "I want to apologize for answering you rudely this morning about that enraging piano. I was in a hard study over—"

"Don't mention it," said Caleb, with a beatific smile. "Besides, 'Providence tempers the wind to the shorn lamb,' as the Bible says in hundreds of different ways. I s'pose your wife's told you what she's done about music for the church? Je—ru—salem! Ain't she a peeler, though?"

"She is indeed—if I may assume that a 'peeler' is an incomparable combination of goodness and good sense."

"That's about the meanin' of it, in my dictionary." Then Caleb fixed his eyes inquiringly upon Philip's face and kept them there so long that Philip asked:—

"What now, Caleb?"

"Nothin'," said Caleb, suddenly looking embarrassed. "That is, nothin' that's any o' my business."

"If 'twas mine, you needn't hesitate to mention it. You and I ought to be fair and frank with each other."

"Well," said Caleb, counting with a stubby forefinger the inches on a yardstick, "I was only wonderin'—that is, I want to say that you're a good deal of a man, an' one that I'm satisfied it's safe to tie to, an' I'm mighty glad you're in your uncle's place, but—for the land's sake, how'd you come to git her?"

Philip laughed heartily, and replied:—

"As most men get wives. I asked her to marry me. First, of course, I put my best foot forward, for a long time, and kept it there."

"Of course. But didn't the other fellers try to cut you out?"

"Quite likely, for most men have eyes."

"Wa'n't any of 'em millionnaires?"

"Probably not, though I never inquired. As she herself has told you, Mrs. Somerton was a saleswoman. Millionnaires do their courting in their own set, where saleswomen can't afford to be."

"That was great luck for you, wasn't it? Are there any women like her in their set?"

"I don't doubt they think so. Mrs. Somerton says there are plenty of them in every set, rich and poor alike. As for me,—'There's Only One Girl in the World'—you've heard the song?"

"Can't say that I have," Caleb replied, suddenly looking thoughtful, "but the idea of it's straight goods an' a yard wide. Well, sir, it's plain to me, an' pretty much ev'rybody else, that that wife o' yourn is the greatest human blessin' that ever struck these parts. Good women ain't scarce here; neither is good an' smart women. I s'pose our folks look pretty common to you, 'cause of their clothes, but they improve on acquaintance. Speakin' o' clothes—ev'rybody, even the best o' folks, fall short o' perfection in some particular, you know. The only way Mis' Somerton can ever do any harm, 'pears to me, is by always bein' so well dressed as to discourage some other women, an' makin' a lot of the gals envious an' discontented. She don't wear no di'monds nor gewgaws, I know, but for all that, she looks, day in an' day out, as if she was all fixed for a party or Sunday-school picnic, an'—But, say, 'I shouldn't wonder if I was on dangerous ground,' as one of our recruits remarked to me at Gettysburg after most of our regiment was killed or wounded."

"Aha!" exclaimed Philip, when he rejoined his wife after the store closed for the day. "'Pride must have a fall'—that is, supposing you were proud of silencing Caleb concerning the piano. He has a torment in preparation for you, personally. He thinks you dress too handsomely—wear party clothes every day, and are likely to upset the heads of the village girls, and some women old enough to know better."

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Grace, flushing indignantly. "I've absolutely no clothes but those I owned when we were poor. I thought them good enough for another season, as no one here would have seen them before, and none of them was very badly worn." She arose, stood before the chamber mirror, and said:—

"This entire dress is made of bits of others, that were two, three, or four years old, and were painfully cheap when new."

"Even if they weren't," said Philip, "they were your own, and earned by hard work, and if ever again Caleb opens his head on the subject, I'll—"

"No, you won't! I don't know what you were going to do, but please don't. Leave Master Caleb to me."

"You don't expect to reason him into believing that you're less effectively dressed than you are?"

"I expect to silence him for all time," Grace replied, again contemplating herself in the mirror, and appearing not dissatisfied with what she saw. The next day she asked Caleb which, if any, of the calicoes in the store were least salable; the cheapest, commonest stuff possible, for kitchen wear. Caleb "reckoned" aloud that the best calico was cheap enough for the store-owner's wife, but Grace persisted, so she was shown the "dead stock,"—the leavings of several seasons' goods,—from which she made two selections. Caleb eyed them with disfavor, and said:—

"That purple one ain't fast color; the yaller one is knowed all over the county as the Scare-Cow calico. We might 'a' worked it off on somebody, if the first an' only dress of it we sold hadn't skeered a cow so bad that she kicked, an' broke the ankle of the gal that was milkin' her."

"Never mind, Caleb; the purple one can afford to lose some of its color, and—oh, I'll see about the other."

Three days later Grace, enveloped in a water-proof cloak, hurried through a shower from the house to the store, and on entering the back room, threw off the cloak. Caleb, who was drawing vinegar from a barrel, arose suddenly, with a half-gallon measure in his hands, and groaned to see his employer's wife, "dressed," as he said afterward, "like a queen just goin' onto a throne, though, come to think of it, I never set eyes on a queen, nor a throne, either." More deplorable still, she looked proud, and conscious, and as if demanding admiration. There was even a suspicion of a wink as she exclaimed:—

"Be careful not to let any of that vinegar run over and splash near me, Caleb! You know the purple isn't fast color!"

"Je—ru—salem!" exclaimed Caleb, dropping the measure and its contents, which Grace escaped by tripping backward to the shelter of a stack of grain-sacks. When she emerged, with a grand courtesy followed by a long, honest laugh, Caleb continued:—

"Well, I've read of folk's bein' clothed in purple an' fine linen, but purple an' Scare-Cow knocks me flat! Dressed in 'dead stock,' from head to foot, an' yit—Hello, Philip! Come in here! Oh! You're knocked pretty flat, too, ain't you? Well, I just wanted to take back what I said the other day about some folk's clothes. I don't b'lieve a dress made of them grain-sacks would look common on her!"

"How stupid of me!" Grace exclaimed. "Why didn't I think of the grain-sacks? I might have corded the seams with heavy dark twine, or piped them with red carpet-binding."

"I don't know what cordin' an' pipin' is," said Caleb, "but after what I've seen, I can believe that you'd only need to rummage in a big rag-bag awhile to dress like a queen—or look like one."