Nor for honest John himself had the sure work of time and change been done less effectually than it had been accomplished for his wife. Not that any alteration was observable in his outward habits, for in truth he was busier and more active than ever, more engrossed with business cares, and, in Honor’s opinion, redder in the face, and in the evening time still more given than of yore, to silence and to slumber. His deep love for his young wife had not diminished; but busy men cannot afford, as Mrs. Beacham had been heard say, to “make a noodle of a woman.” In her day, men had something else to do than to be talking nonsense to a wife, and Honor must learn to do without such silliness. And Honor--as many a young wife has done before her, and as wives will do to the end of time--did learn the salutary lesson, that women are not married to be _toys_, and that for them, as well as for the bread-winners of the family, “life is real, life is earnest;” and that to “wait” does not comprise the whole duty of woman. Gradually--not so gradually, however, but that Honor perceived, with mixed anger and sadness, that so it was--John grew to be less mindful of her presence, and more forgetful of those _petits noms_ of affection, those delicate attentions with which the busiest men in the early days of matrimony are in the habit of indulging their newly-bought toys. At that period of her life, it would have been well for Honor if to work had been one of the necessities of her being. With the instinct born of natural good sense and a desire to do right, she understood this truth, and made more than one effort to be permitted a share in the light daily toil which the old lady so jealously reserved for herself alone. She was naturally, as John used to say in the days of his courtship, when Honor was far too intent upon her paid-for duties to walk with or talk to him--she was naturally a “busy little thing,” and her time, now that she was a lady at large, often hung with perilous heaviness upon her hands. That old Mrs. Beacham was the last woman in the world to understand such a character as that of the young girl whom her son had sworn at the altar to love, honour, and cherish, has been made more than sufficiently evident; nor, even had she been able to comprehend Honor’s peculiar idiosyncrasies of disposition, would the old lady have been qualified, either through evenness of temper or steadiness of purpose, to guide her daughter-in-law in a safe and rightful path. Although, as time wore on, she was, in some respects (and in consequence chiefly of John’s diminution of _outward_ conjugal affection towards his wife) more disposed to make the best of that erring young person, yet Honor was often reminded to her cost, that you _never could be sure of Mrs. Beacham_. Even at the exceptional season, when so many hearts and purses (I speak of those who boast such luxuries) are open, and when cantankerous feelings are supposed to be