No wives are more proud of their husbands nor more anxious that the world should appreciate them at their true worth: for failure in this respect they are readier to blame the world’s obtuseness than any defect in their own estimate. The English wife’s greatest disappointment, perhaps, is that her husband should fail to do himself justice by any fault of his own. She will carry him gaily through failure after failure so long as her own confidence is unimpaired, repairing the cuts and mending the holes worn by unlucky tumbles so skilfully, in the happiest instances, as even to escape his own eye; but if he slip through mere blundering awkwardness, through diffidence or through shortsightedness in missing the step obviously to be taken, then indeed she is smitten to the heart, for has it not destroyed the great illusion, which she might be the first to suspect but the last to give up, that it is he who is carrying her through? It is remarkable how this illusion persists, when it is an illusion, on the part of a man, without his suspecting the reverse of the illusion to be the truth, as it may sometimes be. The indignant refusal to desert Mr Micawber was less, we may suspect (though _he_ did not), due to a sense of his protection than to an agonised fear on his behalf. Yet, even at the best, when a man does his fair share, even to a degree of enviable brilliance, of carrying through, the amount contributed by his wife towards diminishing her own and his dead weight is not so widely recognised. A man, certainly an Englishman, is a costly engine which requires a great deal of attention if the best is to be got out of it: the feeding, coaxing, tuning up, adjustment and lubrication that he constantly needs is enough to occupy one woman’s time for most of a year. If he has never had it, he contrives to run along smoothly enough with the attentions of well paid hirelings who see to his physical lubrication, leaving the mental and emotional gear to look after itself. But once he has it, he surrenders to its need. Thenceforward he has nothing to do but to make his daily run in the outer world knowing that a far more efficient and faithful attendant is waiting to adjust any part of his gear that may have got shaken or damaged in the course of the day. He would pretend to himself, I dare say, that he performs similar services in return to his attendant, but he would find it hard to substantiate his claim. The man returns from the day’s work with the sense of having thrown off a burden till the next morning. Seldom has a woman any similar sensation. Her burden, if less exhausting, is practically continuous: she must sort out her pile of cares and get to the bottom of them daily, for a household will not tolerate the arrears which grow with impunity in a man’s office. If a man felt the same responsibility for his wife’s welfare as she for his, his burden, too, would be continuous. Nature is kind to him in this respect, or perhaps she is only wise.