their pocket.

At first Gavinia was mildly curious only, but her husband's refusal to
answer any questions roused her dander. She tried cajolery, fried his
take of trout deliciously for him, and he sat down to them sniffing.
They were small, and the remainder of their brief career was in two
parts. First he lifted them by the tail, then he laid down the tail.
But not a word about the glove.

She tried tears. "Dinna greet, woman," he said in distress. "What
would the bairn say if he kent I made you greet?"

Gavinia went on greeting, and the baby, waking up, promptly took her
side.

"D----n the thing!" said Corp.

"Your ain bairn!"

"I meant the glove!" he roared.

It was curiosity only that troubled Gavinia. A reader of romance, as
you may remember, she had encountered in the printed page a score of
ladies who, on finding such parcels in their husbands' pockets, left
their homes at once and for ever, and she had never doubted but that
it was the only course to follow; such is the power of the writer of
fiction. But when the case was her own she was merely curious; such
are the limitations of the writer of fiction. That there was a woman
in it she did not believe for a moment. This, of course, did not
prevent her saying, with a sob, "Wha is the woman?"

With great earnestness Corp assured her that there was no woman. He
even proved it: "Just listen to reason, Gavinia. If I was sich a
black as to be chief wi' ony woman, and she wanted to gie me a
present, weel, she might gie me a pair o' gloves, but one glove, what
use would one glove be to me? I tell you, if a woman had the impidence
to gie me one glove, I would fling it in her face."

Nothing could have been clearer, and he had put it thus considerately
because when a woman, even the shrewdest of them, is excited (any man
knows this), one has to explain matters to her as simply and patiently
as if she were a four-year-old; yet Gavinia affected to be
unconvinced, and for several days she led Corp the life of a lodger in
his own house.

"Hands off that poor innocent," she said when he approached the baby.

If he reproved her, she replied meekly, "What can you expect frae a
woman that doesna wear gloves?"

To the baby she said: "He despises you, my bonny, because you hae no
gloves. Ay, that's what maks him turn up his nose at you. But your
mother is fond o' you, gloves or no gloves."

She told the baby the story of the glove daily, with many monstrous
add