* * * * * And John put on his cap and squared his broad shoulders, and, marching off with a resolute stride, went to his office, and had a most uncomfortable morning of it. You see, my dear friends, that though Nature has set the seal of sovereignty on man, in broad shoulders and bushy beard; though he fortify and incase himself in rough overcoats and heavy boots, and walk with a dashing air, and whistle like a freeman, we all know it is not an easy thing to wage a warfare with a pretty little creature in lace cap and tiny slippers, who has a faculty of looking very pensive and grieved, and making up a sad little mouth, as if her heart were breaking. John never doubted that he was right, and in the way of duty; and yet, though he braved it out so stoutly with Lillie, and though he marched out from her presence victoriously, as it were, with drums beating and colors flying, yet there was a dismal sinking of heart under it. “I’m right; I know I am. Of course I can’t give up here; it’s a matter of principle, of honor,” he said over and over to himself. “Perhaps if Lillie had been here I never should have taken such a pledge; but as I have, there’s no help for it.” Then he thought of what Lillie had suggested about it’s looking niggardly in hospitality, and was angry with himself for feeling uncomfortable. “What do I care what Dick Follingsbee thinks?” said he to himself: “a man that I despise; a cheat, and a swindler,—a man of no principle. Lillie doesn’t know the sacrifice it is to me to have such people in my house at all. Hang it all! I wish Lillie was a little more like the women I’ve been used to,—like Grace and Rose and my mother. But, poor thing, I oughtn’t to blame her, after all, for her unfortunate bringing up. But it’s so nice to be with women that can understand the grounds you go on. A man never wants to fight a woman. I’d rather give up, hook and line, and let Lillie have her own way in every thing. But then it won’t do; a fellow must stop somewhere. Well, I’ll make it up in being a model of civility to these confounded people that I wish were in the Red Sea. Let’s see, I’ll ask Lillie if she don’t want to give a party for them when they come. By George! she shall have every thing her own way there,—send to New York for the supper, turn the house topsy-turvy, illuminate the grounds, and do any thing else she can think of. Yes, yes, she shall have _carte blanche_ for every thing!” All which John told Mrs. Lillie when he returned to dinner and found her enacting the depressed wife in a most becoming lace cap and wrapper that made her look like a suffering angel; and the treaty was sealed with many kisses. “You shall have _carte blanche_, dearest,” he said, “for every thing but what we were speaking of; and that will content you, won’t it?”