In such goodly mood and tenor Master Martin Lovejoy sat, early of an October afternoon, to smoke his pipe and enjoy himself. He had finished his dinner--a plain but good one; his teeth were sound, and digestion stanch; he paid his tithes and went to church; he had not an enemy in the world, to the utmost of his knowledge; and his name was good for a thousand pounds from Canterbury to Reigate. His wheat had been fine, and his hops pretty good, his barley by no means below the mark, the cherry and strawberry season fair, and his apples and pears as you see them. Such a man would be guilty of a great mistake if he kept on the tramp perpetually. Fortune encouraged him to sit down, and set an arm-chair and a cushion for him, and mixed him a glass of Schiedam and water, with a slice of lemon, and gave him a wife to ask how his feet were, as well as a daughter to see to his slippers. “Now you don’t get on at all,” he said, as he mixed Mrs Lovejoy the least little drop, because of the wind going round to the north; “you are so abstemious, my dear soul; by-and-by you will pay out for it.” “I must be a disciplinarian, Martin,” Mrs. Lovejoy replied, with a sad sweet smile. “How ever the ladies can manage to take beer, wine, gin, bitters, and brandy, in the way they do, all of an afternoon, is beyond my comprehension.” “They get used to it,” answered the Grower, calmly; “and their constitution requires it. At the same time I am not saying, mind you, that some of them may not overdo it. Moderation is the golden rule; but you carry it too far, my dear.” “Better too little than too much,” said Mrs. Lovejoy sententiously. “Whatever I take, I like just to know that there is something in it, and no more. No, Martin, no--if you please, not more than the thickness of my thumb-nail. Well, now for what we were talking about. We can never go on like this, you know.” “Wife, I will tell you what it is”--here Martin Lovejoy tried to look both melancholy and stern, but failed; “we do not use our duties right; we do not work up in the position to which it has pleased God to call us. We don’t make our children see that they are--bless my heart, what is the word?” “‘Obligated’ is the word you mean. ‘Obligated’ they all of them are.” “No, no; ‘bounden’ is the word I mean; ‘bounden’ says the Catechism. They are bounden to obey, whether they like it or no, and that is the word’s expression. Now is there one of them as does it?” “I can’t say there is,” his wife replied, after thinking of all three of them. “Martin, no; they do their best, but you can’t have them quite tied hand and foot. And I doubt whether we should love them better, if we had them always to order.” “Likely not. I cannot tell. They have given me no chance of trying. They do what seems best in their own eyes, and the fault of it lies with you, mother.”