nd the
solitudes.

"You don't mind sitting here for a while and chatting, do you, b'y?"
said Hubbard. "It's very cold and shivery in the tent." "B'y" was a
word we had picked up from the Newfoundland fishermen, who habitually
use it in addressing one another, be the person addressed old or young.
At first Hubbard and I called each other "b'y" in jest, but gradually
it became with us a term almost of endearment.

"No, b'y," I answered; "I would much rather be out here with you than
in the tent."

"I was thinking," said Hubbard, "of how I loved, in the evening after
dinner last winter, to sit before the wood fire in our grate at
Congers, and watch the blaze with Mina [Mrs. Hubbard] near me. What a
feeling of quiet, and peace, and contentment, would come to me
then!--I'd forget all about the grind at the office and the worries of
the day. That's real happiness, Wallace--a good wife and a cheerful
fireside. What does glory and all that amount to, after all? I've let
my work and my ambition bother me too much. I've hardly taken time for
my meals. In the morning I'd hurry through breakfast and run for my
train. I haven't given my wife and my home the attention they deserve.
That wife of mine, Wallace, deserves a great deal of attention. She's
always thinking of my comfort, and doing things to please me, and
cooking things I like. But I must be boring you with all this talk
about my own affairs."

"No, b'y," I said; "I like to hear about them. I've always been
interested in witnessing how happy you and your wife have been
together."

"She's been a good wife to me, Wallace; and as time has gone on since
our marriage we've grown closer and closer together."

"I see you're like every other man that gets a good wife--you've found
the real key to the house of a man's happiness."

"That's so. A single man, or a man with an uncongenial wife whom he
doesn't love and who doesn't love him, may be as rich as Croesus, and
gain all the honours in the world, and he won't possess an atom of the
happiness of a poor man congenially married. Did I ever tell you about
the day I was married?--the trouble I had?"

"I don't remember that you did. Although I suspected something unusual
on foot, I didn't hear of your marriage until after the deed was done.
You didn't take me into your confidence, you know."

"That was because we had never camped together then, b'y. If we had
camped together, I'd have told you all about it. Mi