“If she doesn’t care then, let her change it,” she said stolidly,--“let her change it. She’s got another in her box--one that a decent woman needn’t be ashamed to be seen in, and--” “O, John, it’s _such_ an old-fashioned one!” Honor broke in. “I’ve had it these two years, and it’s only fit for rainy days. I’d rather not go, indeed I would;” and the tears, I am sorry to say, were already very near her bright blue eyes. John scratched his head in very positive perplexity. To yield to his mother had, from long habit, become almost second nature to the good-tempered man; but then, nature--and nature too with a very powerful voice--pleaded within him strongly for Honor. He could not bear to see her vexed; and she would be vexed, that he knew right well, if they both--his mother and himself--went off to church and left her all alone. But then, if she so disliked the idea of wearing the two-year-old bonnet, and if--which he knew well enough would be the case--his mother would not yield, why what was to be done? It was the beginning of domestic troubles--a foreshadowing of the cloud that was to darken all John’s future life--the first faint warnings of the fell disease that, like the cankerworm, eats into the vital parts, and poisons the whole sap of life, and this truth (though John was far enough from shaping to himself any, even the most indistinct, of the evils that were threatening his peace) probably lay at the root of the strange discouragement which, while he turned his eyes alternately from his wife to his mother, gave a look of bewilderment to his usually placid face. It was that look which decided Honor, showing her the way her duty lay, and awakening her pity for the man halting so helplessly between two opinions. “After all,” she said to herself, calling up as much philosophy to her aid as a weak vessel of her sex and age could hope to summon,--“after all, what does it signify? It _is_ absurd to make so much fuss about a bonnet;” and then aloud, “I don’t care--indeed I don’t, John; and rather than vex you, I’ll change it in half a moment;” and she ran upstairs with an alacrity which confirmed John in the impression that she was an angel.