unt always conveyed to me the impression that he
regarded me as personally responsible for her existence. This used to
weigh upon me. "Your aunt is the most cantankerous, the most--" he broke
off, and shook his fist towards the setting sun. "I wish to God," said
my father, "your aunt had a comfortable little income of her own, with
a freehold cottage in the country, by God I do!" But the next moment,
ashamed, I suppose, of his brutality: "Not but what sometimes, of
course, she can be very nice, you know," he added; "don't tell your
mother what I said just now."

Another who followed with sympathetic interest the domestic comedy was
Susan, our maid-of-all-work, the first of a long and varied series,
extending unto the advent of Amy, to whom the blessing of Heaven. Susan
was a stout and elderly female, liable to sudden fits of sleepiness, the
result, we were given to understand, of trouble; but her heart, it was
her own proud boast, was always in the right place. She could never look
at my father and mother sitting anywhere near each other but she must
flop down and weep awhile; the sight of connubial bliss always reminding
her, so she would explain, of the past glories of her own married state.

Though an earnest enquirer, I was never able myself to grasp the ins
and outs of this past married life of Susan's. Whether her answers were
purposely framed to elude curiosity, or whether they were the result of
a naturally incoherent mind, I cannot say. Their tendency was to convey
confusion.

On Monday I have seen Susan shed tears of regret into the Brussels
sprouts, that she had been debarred by the pressure of other duties from
lately watering "his" grave, which, I gathered, was at Manor Park.
While on Tuesday I have listened, blood chilled, to the recital of her
intentions should she ever again enjoy the luxury of getting her fingers
near the scruff of his neck.

"But, I thought, Susan, he was dead," was my very natural comment upon
this outbreak.

"So did I, Master Paul," was Susan's rejoinder; "that was his
artfulness."

"Then he isn't buried in Manor Park Cemetery?"

"Not yet; but he'll wish he was, the half-baked monkey, when I get hold
of him."

"Then he wasn't a good man?"

"Who?"

"Your husband."

"Who says he ain't a good man?" It was Susan's flying leaps from tense
to tense that most bewildered me. "If anybody says he ain't I'll gouge
their eye out!"

I hastened to assure Susan that my observation