"Of love, father, I guess. I love her, and that's all there is of it. And I shall marry her, if she'll take me, and you can like it or lump it, as you please. She's a good girl, and if she's treated well all round, she'll make a good wife, and she's the only woman that can put the check rein on me, when I get in my tempers. She'll make a man of me yet." "But she can't work," insisted the father. "She looks as white and puny as 'Liz'beth did the year she died." "She's overworked in the school-room. I mean to take her home, and give her a rest. I don't ask any woman to marry me and be my drudge. I expect my wife will keep help." The old man groaned aloud. Ben's ideas were positively ruinous. If he married this girl, it would add to, not decrease, the family expenses. But it was useless to oppose. Ben would do as he pleased, the old man saw that plainly, and he might as well submit. He did submit, and Ben married Edith on his twenty-first birthday, and brought her home. II. Edith was a quiet little creature, with a soft voice, and a pale, sweet face, and frail figure. She came up to Anson English when she entered the house, and put her hands timidly upon his arms. "I want you to love me," she said; "I have had no father or mother since I can remember. I want to call you father, and I want to make you happy if I can." "Well, I'll tell you how," the old man retorted. "Discharge the hired girl, and make good bread. That'll make me happy,"--and he laughed harshly. Edith shrank from his rough words, so void of the sympathy and love she longed for. But she discharged the girl within a week, and tried to make good bread. It was not a success, however, and the old man was not slow to express his dissatisfaction. Edith left the table in tears. "Another dribbler--'Liz'beth was always cryin' just that way over every little thing," sighed the old man. Edith eventually conquered the difficulties of bread making, and became a famous cook. But she did not please her husband's father any the better by this achievement. "You're always a-fixin' up some new sort of trash for the table," he said to her one day. "_Dessert_ is it, you call it? 'Nuff to make a man's patience _desert_ him to see sugar and flour wasted so. 'Liz'beth liked your fancy cooking, but I cured her of it." "Yes, and you killed her too," cried Edith, for the first time since her marriage losing control of her temper and answering back. "Everybody says you worried her into the grave. But you won't succeed so well with me. I will live just to defy you, if no more. And I'll show you that I'll not bear everything, too." It was all over in a moment, and it was not repeated. Indeed, Edith was kinder and gentler and more submissive in her manner after that for days, as sweet natures always are when they have once broken over the rules which govern their lives. Yet the old man always spoke of Edith as a virago after that.