“How cross you are to-night, George! when I’m so tired, too. Johnnie, your face is dirty, go and wash it; be quick now, for it’s time for dinner. I don’t know that Bridget will ever call us. She’s probably sitting out in the kitchen, nursing her teeth; why she has five roots there, and all of them so inflamed that——”
“George, you are extremely irascible, but that’s the way; I get no sympathy at all.”
“Not when you want it by the wholesale for Bridget’s roots.”
“Well, what should we talk about? I don’t see how we can ever have conversation in the home, if you won’t listen to anything.”
And so they went on—the tired husband, moody and irritable, and the tired wife, loquacious about matters of no interest. I felt sorry for her who spake, and him who heard.
A husband worn out with the cares and worries of an unsatisfactory business day, and a wife harrassed and fretted by overwork and petty annoyances, could succeed in talking pleasantly together only by the use of will-power and principle. It would require a big effort, but the effort would pay. It would be one of the best investments a married pair could make. The returns would be quick and large. I wonder more don’t deposit in this bank.
I had not forgotten Mr. Chance. This fact annoyed me excessively, since I saw that he had forgotten me. A forgotten man may remember a woman, and preserve his self-respect, if not his merriment; but when a forgotten woman remembers a man, that is quite another thing. Not that I was brooding over Mr. Chance—far from it; I thought very little of him, in one way, for I frequently saw him with Miss Sprig; but in spite of all that, I could not quite forget the impression he made upon me the day those boys killed the gay little squirrel, and again the day the poor mother went down into the deep, dark water with her child held close to her agonized heart. The feeling I experienced for him on that awful day, was unique in my history. I had never been an impressionable girl as far as men were concerned—I was not an impressionable woman. For me to carry the thought of a man home with me—for me to dwell upon this thought, and above all to take pleasure in dwelling upon it, meant more than it would have meant for some women. That was as far as the matter had gone, but it was far enough—too far, considering his evident indifference, and I was humiliated, for the first time in my life, over my attitude toward a man. This mortification induced me to treat Mr. Chance even more coldly than I should have done ordinarily, though his trifling with Miss Sprig would have called forth some coolness of conduct under any circumstances.