“You don’t mind, then, about the light and the fire of other men,” she said, “if we were to give your stockings to other women to knit for you. But you’re none so fond of spending your money even for the yarn, let alone the knitting. You’re a heavy man upon your feet, and wear out a deal of heels and toes. Some one’s bound to knit them for you. If you like better to pay, I don’t mind, you may make sure of that.” “You!” cried her father, “a piece of stale goods that can’t find a market; who cares for you? You should have been the plague of some other house these ten years, and not sucking the life out of mine, and setting up your face before your betters. _She_ don’t make any observations; and whatever else she is, she’s my wife, and has some right to speak.” Joan’s brown eyes gave out a flash. She was no longer cowed. “I have had a good lesson,” she said. “I can see how nice it is to be your wife, father, and I don’t want to try it on my own account.” “Oh, hush! hush! Joan,” the mother said, her hands coming together once more. “_You_ don’t want to try!” said Joscelyn. “Who’s given you a chance? that’s what I’d like to know. If I had my own way I’d clear you all out of this house. I’d have no useless women here. When a man gets sense he knows what a fool he’s been, burdening himself with a wife and children--a wife that gets old and ugly, and a set of children that defy him under his own roof. Good Lord! think of me, a man in my prime, with a middle-aged woman like that saying father to me! when I might have had my fling, and been a gay young fellow with the best of them. There’s your son too, madam, just gone out of here shaking his fist in my face; and if I knock him down there will be a great hulabooloo got up because he’s my son. Son! what’s a son? or daughter either? A rebellious scamp that will neither do anything for himself nor do what you tell him to do. By the Lord Harry! when I think what a snug comfortable life I might have been living here with nothing to trouble me. And now I can’t stretch my legs under my own mahogany but there’s a brat of a boy to contradict me, or come into my own parlour but there’s a brat of a girl---- no, by Jove no,” he added, with a coarse laugh, “there I’m going too far; not a girl, or anything like it--an old maid. That’s what a man makes by marrying young, like a fool, as I was.”