More than one scathing rebuke fell from her very capable tongue upon the well-calloused understanding of William, the senior Anderson. Her stock complaint is worthy of preservation as showing how little the style of marital reproach has varied within three-quarters of a century. "I don't care for myself, and you know I don't; I don't say a grumbling word at you for not taking me to New York when Mrs. Stewart went with her husband though you know well enough you were quite as able to pay my way as he was to take his wife; and everybody knows that if anyone deserves a rest I do; but no, I never can go to visit my cousin Faith Brewster that I think the world of, though I've never seen her and only heard from her twice in my life, and she may have been dead these ten years for all I know or you care, and even then it would only be my duty to visit her grave and I could carry along a little box of mignonette, in case of, to plant on her last resting place--no I never say one word about these things, and I always spare your feelings instead of telling you how often Mrs. Stewart looks at me as if she had a kind of contemptuous pity for my suffering; but what I feel so awfully hurt about are the airs that the Stewart children put on when they get out of the carriage on Sunday at the meeting-house door; and we've got more than half the distance to travel and you could well afford something of the kind, and then we could get to the meeting-house even if some of us were sick, and because we've had not a day's sickness in the house in fifteen years is no sign we won't have, but all the more sign that it must come sooner or later--" Though this some what inconsistent speech was received with no apparent emotion by the substantial husband and father whom it was intended to pierce with its sharp sarcasm; it always created a little excitement among the children. Mrs. Stewart was really a good woman who was compelled by frequent attacks of illness to pay some attention to personal comfort, and who had never thought of triumphing over her esteemed friend Joy with a glance of pity. Mrs. Anderson was also a good woman; but she unwittingly taught her children to hold envy and dislike for neighbors. Probably she was not the first woman, as she was certainly not the last to pursue this foolish, unchristianlike course. Little William was often an attentive listener to this wail of his mother; and from it he tried to conceive a deep and bitter hatred for the rival aristocratic family at the other end of the village. Very strangely, this effort of the boy, begun and religiously pursued under a sense of family loyalty, was utterly unavailing. There was something in the soft eyes and patient face of Mrs. Stewart which consumed all his bitter thoughts and made him feel more like kissing the lady's hand than hating her, even for his injured mother's sake.