be paid
off and discharged. And when Anderson had hesitated, because he feared
he could not get another so good a hand, and for other reasons, she
burst out into the declaration:

"I don't believe that you'd care a cent if she did marry a Dutchman! She
might as well as to marry some white folks I know."

CHAPTER II.

AN EXPLOSION.

It was settled that August was to be quietly discharged at the end of
his month, which was Saturday night. Neither he nor Julia must suspect
any opposition to their attachment, nor any discovery of it, indeed.
This was settled by Mrs. Anderson. She usually settled things. First,
she settled upon the course to be pursued. Then she settled her husband.
He always made a show of resistance. His dignity required a show of
resistance. But it was only a show. He always meant to surrender in the
end. Whenever his wife ceased her fire of small-arms and herself hung
out the flag of truce, he instantly capitulated. As in every other
dispute, so in this one about the discharge of the "miserable, impudent
Dutchman," Mrs. Anderson attacked her husband at all his weak points,
and she had learned by heart a catalogue of his weak points. Then, when
he was sufficiently galled to be entirely miserable; when she had
expressed her regret that she hadn't married somebody with some heart,
and that she had ever left her father's house, for her _father_ was
_always_ good to her; and when she had sufficiently reminded him of the
lover she had given up for him, and of how much _he_ had loved her, and
how miserable she had made _him_ by loving Samuel Anderson--when she had
conducted the quarrel through all the preliminary stages, she always
carried her point in the end by a _coup de partie_ somewhat in
this fashion:

"That's just the way! Always the way with you men! I suppose I must give
up to you as usual. You've lorded it over me from the start. I can't
even have the management of my own daughter. But I do think that after
I've let you have your way in so many things, you might turn off that
fellow. You might let me have my way in one little thing, and you
_would_ if you cared for me. You know how liable I am to die at any
moment of heart-disease, and yet you will prolong this excitement in
this way."

Now, there is nothing a weak man likes so much as to be considered
strong, nothing a henpecked man likes so much as to be regarded a
tyrant. If you ever hear a man boast of his determination to rule his
o