ith anxieties,
so had John Hathaway's. The protracted absence of his wife made the
gossips conclude that the break was a final one. Jack was only half
contented with his aunt, and would be fairly mutinous in the winter,
while Louisa's general attitude was such as to show clearly that she
only kept the boy for Susanna's sake.

Now and then there was a terrifying hint of winter in the air, and the
days of Susanna's absence seemed eternal to John Hathaway. Yet he was a
man about whom there would have been but one opinion: that when deprived
of a rather superior and high-minded wife and the steadying influence
of home and children, he would go completely "to the dogs," whither he
seemed to be hurrying when Susanna's wifely courage failed. That he had
done precisely the opposite and the unexpected thing, shows us perhaps
that men are not on the whole as capable of estimating the forces
of their fellow men as is God the maker of men, who probably expects
something of the worst of them up to the very last.

It was at the end of a hopeless Sunday when John took his boy back to
his aunt's towards night. He wondered drearily how a woman dealt with a
ten-year-old boy who from sunrise to sunset had done every mortal thing
he ought not to have done, and had left undone everything that he had
been told to do; and, as if to carry out the very words of the church
service, neither was there any health in him; for he had an inflamed
throat and a whining, irritable, discontented temper that could be borne
only by a mother, a father being wholly inadequate and apparently never
destined for the purpose.

It was a mild evening late in October, and Louisa sat on the porch with
her pepper-and-salt shawl on and a black wool "rigolette" tied over her
head. Jack, very sulky and unresigned, was dispatched to bed under the
care of the one servant, who was provided with a cupful of vinegar,
salt, and water, for a gargle. John had more than an hour to wait for
a returning train to Farnham, and although ordinarily he would have
preferred to spend the time in the silent and unreproachful cemetery
rather than in the society of his sister Louisa, he was too tired and
hopeless to do anything but sit on the steps and smoke fitfully in the
semidarkness. Louisa was much as usual. She well knew--who better?--her
brother's changed course of life, but neither encouragement nor
compliment were in her line. Why should a man be praised for living a
respectable