a ring of African gold
that George had put there, which she did not send back like Captain
Blatherem's presents.

Katy was like many intensely matter-of-fact and practical women, who
have not in themselves a bit of poetry or a particle of ideality, but
who yet worship these qualities in others with the homage which the
Indians paid to the unknown tongue of the first whites. They are
secretly weary of a certain conscious dryness of nature in themselves,
and this weariness predisposes them to idolize the man who brings them
this unknown gift. Naturalists say that every defect of organization has
its compensation, and men of ideal natures find in the favor of women
the equivalent for their disabilities among men.

Do you remember, at Niagara, a little cataract on the American side,
which throws its silver sheeny veil over a cave called the Grot of
Rainbows? Whoever stands on a rock in that grotto sees himself in the
centre of a rainbow-circle, above, below, around. In like manner, merry,
chatty, positive, busy, housewifely Katy saw herself standing in a
rainbow-shrine in her lover's inner soul, and liked to see herself so. A
woman, by-the-by, must be very insensible, who is not moved to come upon
a higher plane of being, herself, by seeing how undoubtingly she is
insphered in the heart of a good and noble man. A good man's, faith in
you, fair lady, if you ever have it, will make you better and nobler
even before you know it.

Katy made an excellent wife; she took home her husband's old mother and
nursed her with a dutifulness and energy worthy of all praise, and made
her own keen outward faculties and deft handiness a compensation for the
defects in worldly estate. Nothing would make Katy's black eyes flash
quicker than any reflections on her husband's want of luck in the
material line. "She didn't know whose business it was, if _she_ was
satisfied. She hated these sharp, gimlet, gouging sort of men that would
put a screw between body and soul for money. George had that in him that
nobody understood. She would rather be his wife on bread and water than
to take Captain Blatherem's house, carriages, and horse, and all,--and
she _might_ have had 'em fast enough, dear knows. She was sick of making
money when she saw what sort of men could make it,"--and so on. All
which talk did her infinite credit, because _at bottom_ she _did_ care,
and was naturally as proud and ambitious a little minx as ever breathed,
and was thoroughl