“Oh, oh, Mr. Shapleigh, why will you start such dreadful subjects!” cried Mrs. Shapleigh, in great distress. Let it not be supposed that Mr. and Mrs. Shapleigh were not as comfortable as most married couples. Unlike most, though, in thirty years it had not been determined which was the better man. Mrs. Shapleigh had the mighty weapon of silliness, which has won many matrimonial battles. She never knew when she was beaten, and consequently remained unconquered. Old Tom, having married, like the average man, because the woman tickled his fancy, accepted with great good humour the avalanche of daily disgust that he had brought upon himself, and joked over his misfortune, instead of cutting his throat about it. But as the wind is tempered to the shorn lamb, Mr. Shapleigh was blessed with a slight deafness, which varied according to whether he did or did not want to hear what Mrs. Shapleigh was saying. At particular stages in an argument, or at the mention of certain expenses, he always became as deaf as a post. He did not believe in cures for deafness, and held on to his beloved infirmity like a drowning man to a plank. Thirty years of bickering rather endeared them to each other, particularly as neither had a bad heart. But old Tom sometimes thought, with a dash of tragedy, that had the visitation of God come upon him in the shape of a foolish daughter, he would have been tempted to cut his throat, after all. Sylvia, however, was far from foolish, and Mr. Shapleigh sometimes felt that Fate had treated him shabbily in making his daughter as much too clever as his wife was too silly. Mrs. Shapleigh sent for Bob Skinny, that he might describe Skelton’s sufferings to her. Bob, who considered the master of Deerchase the first person in the universe, and the butler of Deerchase the second, gloried, after the manner of his race, in the magnitude of everything--even their misfortunes--that befell the Skeltons. “Miss Belindy, Mr. Skelton”--this was an innovation in title; but Bob Skinny considered Skelton much too grand to be spoken of simply as “Marse Richard”--“Mr. Skelton he is de mos’ distrusted you ever see. He ain’ eat a mou’full for two weeks lars’ Sad’day, an’ he ain’ sleep a wink for a mont’!” “La, Bob, he’ll be ill if he doesn’t eat or sleep.” “De Skeltons dey kin go ’dout eatin’ an’ sleepin’ more’n common ev’yday folks,” responded Bob, with dignity. “Maybe,” said Mrs. Shapleigh sympathetically, “a course of tansy tea would cure him if his spirits are so bad; and if he’d put some old nails in a stone jar and pour some water on them, and take it three times a day, it is as good a tonic as he could find. And if he won’t go out of the library to take any exercise, if you’d persuade him to swing a flat-iron about in either hand, it would expand his lungs and do for exercise.” None of these suggestions, however, reached young Skelton, shut up in the library, raging like a wild creature.