The three caravans were as usual drawn up in a parallel line with mine in the middle, and their door ends facing the farm. To be in the middle is a most awkward situation, for you cannot speak the least word of caution (or forgiveness, as the case may be) to your wife without running grave risk of being overheard. Often I used carefully to shut all the windows and draw the door curtain, hoping thus to obtain a greater freedom of speech, though this was of little use with the Ilsa and the Ailsa on either side, their windows open, and perhaps a group of caravaners sitting on the ground immediately beneath. My wife was mending, and did not look up when I came in. How differently she behaved at home. She not only used to look up when I came in, she got up, and got up quickly too, hastening at the first sound of my return to meet me in the passage, and greeting me with the smiles of a dutiful and accordingly contented wife. Shutting the Elsa’s windows I drew her attention to this. “But there isn’t a passage,” said she, still with her head bent over a sock. Really Edelgard should take care to be specially feminine, for she certainly will never shine on the strength of her brains. “Dear wife,” I began--and then the complete futility of trying to thresh any single subject out in that airy, sound-carrying dwelling stopped me. I sat down on the yellow box instead, and remarked that I was extremely fatigued. “So am I,” said she. “My feet ache so,” I said, “that I fear there may be something serious the matter with them.” “So do mine,” said she. This, I may observe, was a new and irritating habit she had got into: whatever I complained of in the way of unaccountable symptoms in divers portions of my frame, instead of sympathizing and suggesting remedies she said hers (whatever it was) did it too. “Your feet cannot possibly,” said I, “be in the terrible condition mine are in. In the first place mine are bigger, and accordingly afford more scope for disorders. I have shooting pains in them resembling neuralgia, and no doubt traceable to some nervous source.” “So have I,” said she. “I think bathing might do them good,” I said, determined not to become angry. “Will you get me some hot water, please?” “Why?” said she. She had never said such a thing to me before. I could only gaze at her in a profound surprise. “Why?” I repeated at length, keeping studiously calm. “What an extraordinary question. I could give you a thousand reasons if I chose, such as that I desire to bathe them; that hot water--rather luckily for itself--has no feet, and therefore has to be fetched; and that a wife has to do as she is told. But I will, my dear Edelgard, confine myself to the counter inquiry, and ask why not?”