t--I wished her to save it, I _wished_ it--and I am doing my level best
to support her as nearly as possible in the way in which she has been
accustomed to live. She ought to have an easier time, poor child."

So he did not take a vacation, and the summer was very hot, and when
Flossy came home from Rye she found him wretchedly ill, and discovered
that he had had a trained nurse for two weeks before he let her know
anything about it. Then people pitied Flossy for having her summer
interrupted, and Flossy felt that it was a shame; but she very willingly
sat and fanned Bronson for as much as an hour every day and answered
questions languidly and was pale, and people sent her flowers and were
extremely sorry for her.

When Bronson became well enough to go away, as his doctors ordered, for a
complete rest, Rachel English happened to go on the same train with them,
and the next day I received a letter, or rather an envelope, from her,
with this single sentence enclosed: "And if she didn't make him hold her
in his arms in broad daylight every step of the way, because the train
jarred her back!"

(Tabby, there is no use in talking. I must stop and pull your ears. Come
here and let Missis be really rough with you for a minute.)

There are some women who prefer a valet to a husband; who think that the
more menial are his services in public, the more apparent is his devotion.
It is a Roman-chariot-wheel idea, which degrades both the man and the
woman in the eyes of the spectators. I wrote to Rachel, and said in the
letter, "One horse in the span always does most of the pulling, you know,
especially uphill." And Rachel wrote back, "Wouldn't I just like to drive
this pair, though!"

Bronson had his ideals before he was married, as most men have, concerning
the kind of a home he hoped for. He always said that it was not so much
what your home was, as how it was. He believed that a home consisted more
in the feelings and aims of its inmates than in rugs and jardinieres. He
said to me once, "The oneness of two people could make a home in Sahara."

He was ambitious, too, feeling within himself that power which makes
orators and statesmen, but needing the approval and encouragement of some
one who also realized his capabilities, to enable him to do his best. He
himself was the one who was sympathetic, if he had only known it. His
nature responded with the utmost readiness to whatever appealed to him
from the side of right or justic