wanted it done, and it could answer no
manner of use; and thus to the idyllic dialogues of that period succeed
such as these:--

"My dear, this tea is smoked: can't you get Jane into the way of making
it better?"

"My dear, I have tried; but she will not do as I tell her."

"Well, all I know is, other people can have good tea, and I should think
we might."

And again at dinner:--

"My dear, this mutton is overdone again; it is _always_ overdone."

"Not always, dear, because you recollect on Monday you said it was just
right."

"Well, _almost_ always."

"Well, my dear, the reason to-day was, I had company in the parlor, and
could not go out to caution Bridget, as I generally do. It's very
difficult to get things done with such a girl."

"My mother's things were always well done, no matter what her girl was."

Again: "My dear, you must speak to the servants about wasting the coal.
I never saw such a consumption of fuel in a family of our size"; or, "My
dear, how can you let Maggie tear the morning paper?" or, "My dear, I
shall actually have to give up coming to dinner, if my dinners cannot be
regular"; or, "My dear, I wish you would look at the way my shirts are
ironed,--it is perfectly scandalous"; or, "My dear, you must not let
Johnnie finger the mirror in the parlor"; or, "My dear, you must stop
the children from playing in the garret"; or, "My dear, you must see
that Maggie doesn't leave the mat out on the railing when she sweeps the
front hall"; and so on, up-stairs and down-stairs, in the lady's
chamber, in attic, garret, and cellar, "my dear" is to see that nothing
goes wrong, and she is found fault with when anything does.

Yet Enthusius, when occasionally he finds his sometime angel in tears,
and she tells him he does not love her as he once did, repudiates the
charge with all his heart, and declares he loves her more than
ever,--and perhaps he does. The only thing is that she has passed out of
the plane of moonshine and poetry into that of actualities. While she
was considered an angel, a star, a bird, an evening cloud, of course
there was nothing to be found fault with in her; but now that the angel
has become chief business-partner in an earthly working firm, relations
are different. Enthusius could say the same things over again under the
same circumstances, but unfortunately now they never are in the same
circumstances. Enthusius is simply a man who is in the habit of speaking
from impulse, an