But he understood my meaning, so far as to tell me of a case he had known some years ago. A friend of his had married a lovely girl, who had not a penny to bless herself with, and he was most deeply attached to her. But although he was very well off for money, and not at all of a stingy turn, for a long time it never came into his head that his wife had only two gowns, two bonnets, and one cloak. She was too proud to ask him for money; and instead of doing that, went on and on, wearing out all her poor things, until they were scarcely fit to be looked at. And many bitter tears she shed, as she darned, and patched, and let pieces in, convinced more and more, as the light shone through, that her husband must hate her to keep her like that. And perhaps it would have ended in the ruin of them both, for some villain was making love to her, when, luckily a sister of his came to see them, and scolded him roundly for his blind neglect. “Why, bless her heart!” he cried, opening his eyes; “I never see Mary’s clothes—I see Mary.” “Now mind you are not such a jackanapes as that;” my Uncle drew the moral, as he rubbed his hands, for he loved to have his stories laughed at; “when you have got your Kitty, and I don’t see why you should not, be sure that you praise her dresses and bonnets; not quite so much perhaps as you praise herself, but still every time you can think of it. Women like that sort of thing, somehow. I can hardly tell you why; for if any man praised my coat or my hat, I should be vexed with him, unless it was to say that I had got them dirt-cheap. But perhaps the reason is that a woman’s clothes are a part of her mind and her body too, a sort of another self to her.” “How on earth do you know such a lot about women?” I asked, though I thought that he did not know much. “One would think you had been married for forty years! What woman can have taught you all these things!” “Mind your own business,” my Uncle answered sharply. “You will have quite enough to do with that, as things appear at present. You have made play with this pretty girl, and you have booked your place with her father. Also you have got over me, who meant to have nothing to do with it. And you have given that hateful woman a Roland for her Oliver. But I will go bail that you have no idea whose shoulders will bear the brunt of it. Who should you say was the trump-card now?” “The learned Professor,” I replied; “the man who could kill that woman with a wire, if he were not so magnanimous. The man who knows everything in this world, except how to manage his own household. He will stand up for me, and I shall win.”