is evil. Jim, as his
father had truly told him, was "not the pootiest-mannered feller a gal
ever see," and in the daily home-life this became apparent to Sarah
as it had never been in all the years they had been near neighbors.
Naturally, she wished her husband to be pleasing to her father, and at
last ventured to hint, as delicately as she could, at various little
points in which improvements might be made. At first Jim did not seem
very restless under such reproofs, given, as they were, with many
a loving kiss and winsome look; but as months went on his wife's
caresses were more carelessly received, and her hinted corrections
with more of resentment. One evening stately old Thomas Macy had
"happened in," and Jim had greatly grieved his wife by his curt,
uncivil manner to her father. After he had gone Sarah spoke in a low
tone and kindly as always, but with more spirit than she had ever
before manifested or felt, of her husband's disrespectful ways to the
aged.

For a moment after his wife had ceased, Jim sat with his hat
pulled closely over his eyes, fiercely biting into the apple he was
eating--biting and throwing the bits into the glowing mass of peat on
the hearth. Then he sprang to his feet, exclaiming, "I see! It's all
come true, what ev'rybody said. Thee thinks thee an' thy folks is
better'n me an' my folks, an' keeps all the time a-naggin' on me. I
wish I'd merried Mary Allen! I won't stan' no more o' this talk. If I
ain't to be maaster o' my own house I won't stay in't." (The house was
his father's, but angry men never think of such trifles.) And waxing
pitiful of himself, he continued in a broken and injured tone, "The
bed o' the sea's the bes' place fur a man whose own wife's got tew big
feelin' ter put up wi' his ways."

With this dignified burst of eloquence the angry fellow flung himself
out of the house, letting in at the door as he went a dash of cold,
sleety rain and a gust of wind that put out the flickering tallow dip
that was enabling Sarah to take the last stitches in the tiny
white slip that now fell from her fingers. Too sorely wounded for
resentment, too fond of her husband to wish even his parents to see
him in the light in which he was now revealed to her, Sarah silently
stooped to recover her work, and as she did so her hand was met under
the table by a sympathizing pressure from that of her mother-in-law.
This was too much, and, laying her head in the elder woman's lap,
poor Sarah wept w