He had
breadth enough of view to see that there was nothing so very exceptional
in this educational trader's dealings with his subordinates, but he had
also manly feeling enough to attack the particular individual instance
of wrong before him. There are plenty of dealer's in morals, as in
ordinary traffic, who confine themselves to wholesale business. They
leave the small necessity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers,
who are poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the
every-day charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a
gray rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree
loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let
alone. The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone.
Then one remembers that he is a rodent, acting after the law of his
kind, and cools down and is contented to drive him off and guard the
tree against his teeth for the future. As soon as this is done, one can
watch his attempts at mischief with a certain amusement.

This was the kind of process Mr. Bernard had gone through. First, the
indignant surprise of a generous nature, when it comes unexpectedly into
relations with a mean one. Then the impulse of extermination,--a divine
instinct, intended to keep down vermin of all classes to their
working averages in the economy of Nature. Then a return of cheerful
tolerance,--a feeling, that, if the Deity could bear with rats and
sharpers, he could; with a confident trust, that, in the long run,
terriers and honest men would have the upperhand, and a grateful
consciousness that he had been sent just at the right time to come
between a patient victim and the master who held her in peonage.

Having once made up his mind what to do, Mr. Bernard was as good-natured
and hopeful as ever. He had the great advantage, from his professional
training, of knowing how to recognize and deal with the nervous
disturbances to which overtasked women are so liable. He saw well enough
that Helen Darley would certainly kill herself or lose her wits, if he
could not lighten her labors and lift off a large part of her weight
of cares. The worst of it was, that she was one of those women who
naturally overwork themselves, like those horses who will go at the top
of their pace until they drop. Such women are dreadfully unmanageable.
It is as hard reasoning with them as it would have been reasoning with
Io, when she was flying ove