The tea was good, and I saw by the gratified astonishment of Mary’s face that it was a treat. When the “Busy B” (as Mrs. Bulkley was generally called behind her back) had had her first cup, as a pick-me-up--a sort of green-tea cocktail--she felt better. She loosened her specs and let them slide well down her nose, so she could look at me over their tops; she planted her black alpaca elbow on the dingy table, and unlimbered, ready for conversation, while, for the first time in my life, I recognized these signs in a landlady without instantly taking flight. “Why,” she began, “it was like this: Right from the first every one said she’d throwed herself away when she took up with that great, big, pink-and-white chuckle-head, Phil Worden. But she was just plumb crazy in love with him. I suppose he must have cared a little for her at first, but mother always said he just married her out of vanity--like gals do sometimes--she being the biggest catch in town. Good looks, and money and family the hull thing! Well, anyway, he was a foolin’ her, or thought he was, before they was married a year. She knew of it in no time. Mother thought there’d be an awful rumpus, but Mrs. Worden shut herself up all afternoon alone, and walked and walked, but when supper-time come she just met him as kind and as sweet! Oh! Myra used to be sweet enough in them days, and she just talked and laughed, and he looked like a great school-boy expecting a good trouncing. Well, that blowed over, but Myra Worden was always on the watch, I reckon, after that. Mother used to say he was, somehow, afraid of her. She loved books--good Lord! the books she had; lots of ’em writ in French, too; and she first off tried to talk of ’em to him, same as to visitors, and he didn’t know a thing about ’em. Then she tried to read them to him, and mother said she didn’t know which one she felt the sorriest for, him or her; him trying to keep awake, or her trying to hide her disappointment. Well, by-and-by, she gives it all up, and, if you’ll believe me, that educated, fine-minded woman just took to readin’ out loud to him a nasty, low-down paper--I can’t just call its name now, but all about cock-fights--oh, yes! they had dog-fights and cock-fights in my time, my dear--and ring fights, and horse-races, and he’d just drink it all in, every word. She was fond of music, and he couldn’t tell one tune from another, he said; but that was just an excuse, because he hated to have to sit and listen to decent music. Common fiddling suited him well enough. He was almost stupid in behavior or sulky-like in company--proper company; but if, by chance, he was left home at night and his wife was out, he’d carry on with the servants, and sing songs, and play tricks with the cards, and imitate things--pigs gruntin’ and corks poppin’, and that like, until you’d laugh to split. In that sort of way, mother used to say, she thought he felt afraid of his wife’s finding out his real