“Just everything, stupid. Your wife being soft—or credulous, if you like it better—she sucks in a lot of lies against you. The dose comes from somebody she believes in, not her old enemies, of course. Her dignity will not allow her to complain—women are always horribly dignified when jealous—and off she goes, without a word, leaving you to your own conscience which will more than give you the tip for it. She’ll come back by-and-by, when she has punished you enough; and then of course you’ll have to swear, etc., etc. She’ll call herself all sorts of names. And there’ll be nobody like you, till next time. You’ll see if that isn’t at the bottom of all this.” “Not likely,” I answered with some wrath. “In the first place, my Kitty would never believe a word of such stuff against me, and there is no such thing as jealousy in her nature.” “You know best. But I thought I heard something from the man round the corner at Ludred.” “That was a different thing altogether,” I said quickly, although the remembrance struck me, as it had not done before; “and in the next place, if she could be so absurd, she would be the last person in the world to go away without a word, without even giving me a chance of taking my own part. No, that theory will never do. My Kitty was the most just, as well as the kindest darling ever born.” “You don’t know what they are sometimes. How can you expect to know more about them than they do about themselves? Yesterday, just by way of something, I asked Sally what she would do, if she ever turned up jealous. ‘I would grind my ring-finger off,’ she said, ‘with these two teeth, I would, Sam’—for she has got uncommon grinders—‘and I would make my rival swallow it.’ Now, Sally has been well broken in, remember, and no vice in the family; at any rate since her great grand-dam; but her eyes showed that she would do it!” “There is no ferocity in Kitty,” I answered with a lofty air; “I know nothing about race-horses, and very little about women. But women are only men in a better form, more gentle, more just, and more loving. They never give way to such fury as we do—” “The Professor’s wife, for instance, Kit. She never gives way to her temper, does she? Oh dear, no. Even if she has any temper to give way to. A sucking dove—too mild to suck, if her sister wants the pigeon’s milk before her.” “She is the exception that proves the rule. And I doubt whether even she would be so, if she did not suck too much of stronger liquor. And I will tell you another thing, Master Sam, as you have put me up to this; and you have a right to know everything now, that you may understand the case. It knocks your theory on the head. Only I must have your solemn promise that no one shall ever hear of it.” Sam gave me his pledge; and I knew that he would keep it, for he was well inured to control his tongue. Then I told him, although it went much against the grain, of the disappearance of our stock of money.