the last of March, but the
trees were filmed with green and paling with promise of bloom; the front
yards were showing new grass pricking through the old. It was high
time to plow the south field and the garden, but Christopher sat in his
rocking-chair beside the kitchen window and gazed out, and did absolutely
nothing about it.

Myrtle Dodd, Christopher's wife, washed the breakfast dishes, and later
kneaded the bread, all the time glancing furtively at her husband. She
had a most old-fashioned deference with regard to Christopher. She was
always a little afraid of him. Sometimes Christopher's mother, Mrs.
Cyrus Dodd, and his sister Abby, who had never married, reproached her
for this attitude of mind. "You are entirely too much cowed down by
Christopher," Mrs. Dodd said.

"I would never be under the thumb of any man," Abby said.

"Have you ever seen Christopher in one of his spells?" Myrtle would ask.

Then Mrs. Cyrus Dodd and Abby would look at each other. "It is all your
fault, mother," Abby would say. "You really ought not to have allowed
your son to have his own head so much."

"You know perfectly well, Abby, what I had to contend against," replied
Mrs. Dodd, and Abby became speechless. Cyrus Dodd, now deceased some
twenty years, had never during his whole life yielded to anything but
birth and death. Before those two primary facts even his terrible will
was powerless. He had come into the world without his consent being
obtained; he had passed in like manner from it. But during his life
he had ruled, a petty monarch, but a most thorough one. He had spoiled
Christopher, and his wife, although a woman of high spirit, knew of no
appealing.

"I could never go against your father, you know that," said Mrs. Dodd,
following up her advantage.

"Then," said Abby, "you ought to have warned poor Myrtle. It was a shame
to let her marry a man as spoiled as Christopher."

"I would have married him, anyway," declared Myrtle with sudden
defiance; and her mother-inlaw regarded her approvingly.

"There are worse men than Christopher, and Myrtle knows it," said she.

"Yes, I do, mother," agreed Myrtle. "Christopher hasn't one bad habit."

"I don't know what you call a bad habit," retorted Abby. "I call having
your own way in spite of the world, the flesh, and the devil rather a
bad habit. Christopher tramples on everything in his path, and he always
has. He tramples on poor Myrtle."

At that Myrtle laughed. "I don't t