"It does sound a little rough, my dear; but I can't help it. She does
exasperate me so. She doesn't show a proper deference for your husband,
my dear. We are married now, and she ought to give up her objections to
me. I can't be expected to place myself in her leading strings."

"But you mustn't demand too much at once, and should try to conciliate
her. Now do, for my sake; won't you, dear?"

Here we were, only a month married, and spending our honeymoon at a most
charming summer resort, where there was no excuse for getting out of
patience. Everything was beautiful and attractive: Little hotel,
strange to say, quite delightful; no fault to find with surroundings and
accommodations; my darling Bessie, as sweet as an angel and determined
to be happy and to make me happy; everything, in short, calculated to
give us a long summer of delight.

That is, if Bessie had only been an orphan. But there was her mother,
who had joined us on our summer trip, after the first two weeks of
unalloyed happiness, and threatened to accompany us through life.
Already it almost made the prospect dismal. The idea that Bessie and I
would ever quarrel, or even have any impatient words together, had
seemed to me to be simply ridiculous. I had seen what I had seen. My
dashing friend, Fred, and his stylish wife,--they had been married two
years, and a visible coldness had come upon them. I knew, by an
occasional angry whisper and knitting of the brow before people, that he
must sometimes swear and rave in the privacy of their own rooms, and her
cutting replies or haughty indifference showed that there had been a
deal of love lost between them in those two years.

Other people, too, got indifferent or downright hostile in their
marital relations. But then, I was not a dashing fellow and Bessie was
not stylish, and in other ways we were quite different from most people.
Ours had been a real love-match from the first. Bessie was simple and
unaffected, honest and pure in every thought, and determined to make me
a faithful and loving wife till death did us part. As for me, why, of
course I was generous and affectionate, ready to make any sacrifice and
bear any burden for the trusting creature who had so freely given
herself into my keeping. There should be no clouds to darken her life. I
would never be selfish or impatient, or for one moment hurt her gentle
heart by heedless act or careless word.

But plague upon it! I could not get on with her mot