There were now only a cook and one housemaid and a man of all work--all three newcomers, for Presbury insisted--most wisely--that none of the servants of the luxurious, wasteful days would be useful in the new circumstances. He was one of those small, orderly men who have a genius for just such situations as the one he now proceeded to grapple with and solve. In his pleasure at managing everything about that house, in distributing the work among the three servants, in marketing, and, in inspecting purchases and nosing into the garbage-barrel, in looking for dust on picture-frames and table-tops and for neglected weeds in the garden walks--in this multitude of engrossing delights he forgot his anger over the trick that had been played upon him. He still fought with his wife and denounced her and met insult with insult. But that, too, was one of his pleasures. Also, he felt that on the whole he had done well in marrying. He had been lonely as a bachelor, had had no one to talk with, or to quarrel with, nothing to do. The marriage was not so expensive, as his wife had brought him a house--and it such a one as he had always regarded as the apogee of elegance. Living was not dear in Hanging Rock, if one understood managing and gave time to it. And socially he was at last established. Soon his wife was about as contented as she had ever been in her life. She hated and despised her husband, but quarreling with him and railing against him gave her occupation and aim--two valuable assets toward happiness that she had theretofore lacked. Her living--shelter, food, clothing enough--was now secure. But the most important factor of all in her content was the one apparently too trivial to be worthy of record. From girlhood she could not recall a single day in which she had not suffered from her feet. And she had been ashamed to say anything about it--had never let anyone, even her maid, see her feet, which were about the only unsightly part of her. None had guessed the cause of her chronic ill-temper until Presbury, that genius for the little, said within a week of their marriage: "You talk and act like a woman with chronic corns." He did not dream of the effect this chance thrust had upon his wife. For the first time he had really "landed." She concealed her fright and her shame as best she could and went on quarreling more viciously than ever. But he presently returned to the attack. Said he: "Your feet hurt you. I'm sure they do. Now that I think of it, you walk that way." "I suppose I deserve my fate," said she. "When a woman marries beneath her she must expect insult and low conversation." "You must cure your feet," said he. "I'll not live in the house with a person who is made fiendish by corns. I think it's only corns. I see no signs of bunions." "You brute!" cried his wife, rushing from the room.