les, has to be trained up before they're real good comp'ny. You
have to begin with 'em early, and begin as you mean to hold out. When
they once git in the habit of takin' the bit in their teeth and runnin',
it's too late for you to hold 'em in."

It was only to strangers that he aired his convictions on the training
of "womenfolks," though for that matter he might safely have done it
even at home; for everybody in Limington knew that it would always
have been too late to begin with the Widder Bixby, since, like all the
Stovers of Scarboro, she had been born with the bit in her teeth. Jerry
had never done anything he wanted to since he had married her, and he
hadn't really wanted to do that. He had been rather candid with her on
this point (as candid as a tender-hearted and obliging man can be with
a woman who is determined to marry him, and has two good reasons why she
should to every one of his why he shouldn't), and this may have been
the reason for her jealousy. Although by her superior force she had
overborne his visible reluctance, she, being a woman, or at all events
of the female gender, could never quite forget that she had done the
wooing.

Certainly his charms were not of the sort to tempt women from the
strict and narrow path, yet the fact remained that the Widder Bixby was
jealous, and more than one person in Limington was aware of it.

Pelatiah, otherwise "Pel" Frost, knew more about the matter than most
other folks, because he had unlimited time to devote to general culture.
Though not yet thirty years old, he was the laziest man in York County.
(Jabe Slocum had not then established his record; and Jot Bascom had
ruined his by cutting his hay before it was dead in the summer of '49,
always alluded to afterwards in Pleasant River as the year when gold was
discovered and Jot Bascom cut his hay.)

Pel was a general favorite in half a dozen villages, where he was the
life of the loafers' bench. An energetic loafer can attend properly to
one bench, but it takes genius as well as assiduity to do justice to six
of them. His habits were decidedly convivial, and he spent a good deal
of time at the general musters, drinking and carousing with the other
ne'er-do-weels. You may be sure he was no favorite of Mrs. Todd's; and
she represented to him all that is most undesirable in womankind, his
taste running decidedly to rosy, smiling, easy-going ones who had no
regular hours for meals, but could have a dinner on the