His first vocative expressed all, but he was a politician and used to elaborating his mental processes for the benefit of befuddled intellects. "You'll have them springs mended," he informed his wife, who was smiling brilliantly and sweetly across the debris of ham and eggs, salt mackerel, coffee and hot breads--"that is, if they need it, which I haven't noticed, and I'm some heavier than you. But you'll introduce no more of your damned new-fangled notions into this house. It was good enough for my parents, and it's good enough for us. We lived for fifteen years without art lampshades that hurt my eyes, and rugs that trip me up; and these last eight or nine years, since you've been runnin' a club when you ain't runnin' to New York, I've had too many cold suppers to suit me; I've paid bills for 'teas' to that Club and I've put out money for fine clothes for you that I could spend a long sight better at election time. But I've stood all that, for I guess I'm as good a husband as any in God's own country; I like to see you well dressed, for you're still a looker--and it's good business, anyhow; and I've never grudged you a hired girl. But there's a limit to every man's patience. I draw the line at two beds. That's all there is to it." He had made a part of his speech standing, that being his accustomed position when laying down the law, and he now left the room with the heavy country slouch his wife had never been able to reform. He had no authority in walk or bearing, being a man more obstinate than strong, more cunning than firm. She was thankful that he did not bestow upon her the usual marital kiss; the smell of coffee on his moustache had sickened her faintly ever since she had ceased to love him. Or begun to hate him? She had wondered, as she lay there inhaling deeply to draw the blood from her head, if she ever had loved him. When a man and a maid are young! He had been a tall slim youth, with red cheeks and bright eyes, the "catch" of the village; his habits were commendable and he would inherit his father's store, his only brother having died a year earlier and his sisters married and moved West. She was pretty, empty-headed, as ill-educated as all girls of her class, but she kept her father's house neatly, she was noted even at sixteen for her pies, and at twenty for the dexterity and taste with which she made her own clothes out of practically nothing. She was by no means the ordinary fool of her age class and nation. But although she was incapable of passion, she had a thin sentimental streak, a youthful desire for a romance, and a cold dislike for an impending stepmother. David Balfame wooed her over the front gate and won her in the orchard; and the year was in its springtime. It was all as natural and inevitable as the measles and whooping-cough through which she nursed him during the first year of their marriage.