likely to attain the low standard of excellence we have mentioned as satisfactory to the British housekeeper. Marianne gave her husband no help. Of course, she was not bound to. _We_ know! No woman is under any legal obligation to assist her husband against himself, if his affections--promised at the altar, don't you see?--become weak-kneed and uncertain. He may have to love uphill, but he must take his chance of that. Still, she need not skid his wheels or put stones in his path. But did Marianne do so? In our opinion she did. Mere words, told in a story, go for little; a shade of accent makes them much or nothing. How, we ask you, did Bob Challis, Rugby-sharpened, know that his mater, whenever she made an allusion to churches or chapels, was having a fling at his Governor? How did Bob know that his Governor was making no answer in italics, as one might say, when he turned to him and said: "Got your new skates, human schoolboy? Let's have a look! Now, why is it no new strap ever has a hole in the right place?" And made conversation, transparently. Bob did know, somehow; and had he been present to hear his mother say that Mrs. Steptoe went to Chapel, he would have quite understood her inflection of voice to convey an addendum, "which _you_ don't; or, at least, Church, and you wouldn't say the responses if you did." If Mrs. Challis would only have left that point alone, it would have made a world of difference in her relation with her husband. Why would she not? He had left her free to secure salvation, not only to her own children, but to her nephew or stepson, whichever you like to call Bob. And he had made no conditions except that he himself should be allowed the luxury of perdition on his own terms. "You let me go to the Devil my own way, Polly Anne," he had said, "and you shall have poor Kate's boy, and tell him any gammon you like." Perhaps the reason why he said--just now in the story--"_Docta conjux_, indeed!" may have been some memory of how, when Bob blacked another boy's eye for calling the Founder of Christianity a Jew, Marianne had defended his action, and condemned the other boy for impiety and heathenism. "And you know I'm right, Titus," said the lady triumphantly.