s you can
conceive! My dear!" Mrs. Berry pressed her hands flat on her apron. "We
hadn't been a three months man and wife, when that man--it wasn't the
honeymoon, which some can't say--that man--Yes! he kicked me. His wedded
wife he kicked! Ah!" she sighed to Lucy's large eyes, "I could have
borne that. A blow don't touch the heart," the poor creature tapped her
sensitive side. "I went on loving of him, for I'm a soft one. Tall as a
Grenadier he is, and when out of service grows his moustache. I used to
call him my body-guardsman like a Queen! I flattered him like the fools
we women are. For, take my word for it, my dear, there's nothing here
below so vain as a man! That I know. But I didn't deserve it.... I'm a
superior cook.... I did not deserve that noways." Mrs. Berry thumped her
knee, and accentuated up her climax: "I mended his linen. I saw to his
adornments--he called his clothes, the bad man! I was a servant to him,
my dear! and there--it was nine months--nine months from the day he
swear to protect and cherish and that--nine calendar months, and my
gentleman is off with another woman! Bone of his bone!--pish!" exclaimed
Mrs. Berry, reckoning her wrongs over vividly. "Here's my ring. A pretty
ornament! What do it mean? I'm for tearin' it off my finger a dozen
times in the day. It's a symbol? I call it a tomfoolery for the
dead-alive to wear it, that's a widow and not a widow, and haven't got
a name for what she is in any Dixonary, I've looked, my dear, and"--she
spread out her arms--"Johnson haven't got a name for me!"

At this impressive woe Mrs. Berry's voice quavered into sobs. Lucy spoke
gentle words to the poor outcast from Johnson. The sorrows of Autumn
have no warning for April. The little bride, for all her tender pity,
felt happier when she had heard her landlady's moving tale of the
wickedness of man, which cast in bright relief the glory of that one
hero who was hers. Then from a short flight of inconceivable bliss, she
fell, shot by one of her hundred Argus-eyed fears.

"O Mrs. Berry! I'm so young! Think of me--only just seventeen!"

Mrs. Berry immediately dried her eyes to radiance. "Young, my dear!
Nonsense! There's no so much harm in being young, here and there. I knew
an Irish lady was married at fourteen. Her daughter married close over
fourteen. She was a grandmother by thirty! When any strange man began,
she used to ask him what pattern caps grandmothers wore. They'd stare!
Bless you! the gr