e have
involved very serious expenses; and then, too, we are living at a very
different rate of expense from what we ever lived before"--

"There it is, John! Now, you oughtn't to reproach me with it; for you
know it was your own idea. I didn't want the alterations made; but you
would insist on it. I didn't think it was best; but you would have
them."

"But, Lillie, it was all because you wanted them."

"Well, I dare say; but I shouldn't have wanted them if I thought it
was going to bring in all this bother and trouble, and make me have to
look over old accounts, and all such things. I'd rather never have had
any thing!" And here Lillie began to cry.

"Come, now, my darling, do be a sensible woman, and not act like a
baby."

"There, John! it's just as I knew it would be; I always said you
wanted a different sort of a woman for a wife. Now, you knew when you
took me that I wasn't in the least strong-minded or sensible, but a
poor little helpless thing; and you are beginning to get tired of me
already. You wish you had married a woman like Grace, I know you do."

"Lillie, how silly! Please do listen, now. You have no idea how simple
and easy what I want to explain to you is."

"Well, John, I can't to-night, anyhow, because I have a headache. Just
this talk has got my head to thumping so,--it's really dreadful! and
I'm so low-spirited! I do wish you had a wife that would suit you
better." And forthwith Mrs. Lillie dissolved in tears; and John
stroked her head, and petted her, and called her a nice little pussy,
and begged her pardon for being so rough with her, and, in short,
acted like a fool generally.

"If that woman was _my_ wife now," I fancy I hear some youth with a
promising moustache remark, "I'd make her behave!"

Well, sir, supposing she was your wife, what are you going to do about
it?

What are you going to do when accounts give your wife a sick headache,
so that she cannot possibly attend to them? Are you going to enact the
Blue Beard, and rage and storm, and threaten to cut her head off? What
good would that do? Cutting off a wrong little head would not turn it
into a right one. An ancient proverb significantly remarks, "You
can't have more of a cat than her skin,"--and no amount of fuming and
storming can make any thing more of a woman than she is. _Such_ as
your wife is, sir, you must take her, and make the best of it. Perhaps
you want your own way. Don't you wish you could get it?

But didn'