I told mamma all that had taken place, and how hastily Edward had behaved, without showing the least regard to my feelings, and had set upon poor Mary for all the world like a Turk. But dear mother told me, with her usual kindness, that she wasn’t in the least surprised at my husband’s forgetting himself, as it was just what she had expected from him all along; for, from the insight she had had into Edward’s character of late, she was afraid that I should have a good deal more to bear with from him, and that my time was likely to be a hard one. Still, as the good soul very truly observed, it was no business of hers, and she was the last person to think of setting me against my husband; though, from what I had told her, she could not help saying, that Edward certainly did appear to her to be just like the rest of the men, and no better than he should be; adding, that the best way would be for me to have an understanding with him the very first opportunity, and tell him, that if he couldn’t conduct himself more like a rational creature for the future, that he had better manage the house himself. She begged me, in saying this, however, to remember that she had no wish to figure in quarrels between man and wife; observing, with great truth, that as I had made my bed, so I must lie upon it; and that if my bed were strewed with thorns, however uncomfortable it might be, still it could be no fault of hers, though she pitied me from the bottom of her heart; for, as she said, it must be a sad change for a poor dear that was so thinskinned as myself; adding, with great kindness, that if she could possibly have known half as much of Edward before my marriage as she did now, that she certainly should have thought twice before she had given her consent for the house of the Sk--n--st--ns to be grafted upon the family tree of the B--ff--ns.