n't want you to work less;
but, in all seriousness, my dear fellow, you should take it easier. Do
just as much work, but don't worry so much about it. Carry your
whatsaname more lightly, you know. Believe me, that's the thing.'

I agreed of course, and went home to give Fanny the news of the
increased salary. I found her helpless and comatose on the hearth-rug.

I had talked to doctors, and gleaned little or nothing therefrom. Now
I tried a lawyer, with a view to finding out the legal aspect of my
position. Was it possible to oblige my wife to enter a curative
institution against her will? Certainly not, save by a magistrate's
order, and as the result of repeated appearances in the dock at police
courts.

The lawyer told me that our 'man-made' laws were pretty hard upon
husbands in such cases as mine. They offered no relief or assistance
whatever, he said; though in the case of a persistently drunken
husband, the law was fortunately able to do a good deal for the wife.
'But nothing at all when it's the other way round,' he added; 'a fact
which leads to much misery, and not a little crime, among the poorer
classes. I'm very sorry for you,' he added; 'but to be frank, I must
say that the law will not help you one atom; neither will it offer you
any kind of redress if your wife sells up your home once a week.
Neither may you legally put her out from your home because of that.
Under our law a wife may claim and hold her husband's company until
she drives him into the bankruptcy court, or the lunatic asylum--or
his grave. It is worse than senseless, but it is the law; and if your
business prevents you keeping watch and ward over your wife yourself,
the only course is to employ some relative, or a professed caretaker,
to do it for you. The law shows a little more common sense where the
case is the other way round. A wife can always get a separation order
to relieve her of the presence of a persistently drunken husband; and,
with it, an order for her maintenance, which he must obey or go to
prison.'

So I did not get very much for my six-and-eightpence, beyond an
explicit confirmation of the impression already pretty firmly rooted
in my mind, that the most burdensome portion of my particular load in
life was something which nobody could help me to carry.

By this time Fanny had lost the sense of shame and humiliation which
had characterised all her early recoveries, and informed all her good
resolutions and frantic promi