Larrie walked home. He was thinking all the way of the new leaf he was about to turn. Dot had behaved in an altogether unforgivable manner. He must be firm with her, very firm, he told himself. He was inclined to spoil her, as he had said, and overlook her faults--but from now, he must show her, too, his displeasure at the disrespectful way she had treated him in the morning. Boxing a husband's ears! The red burnt on his brow as he opened the gate, thinking of it and heard Dot trilling Amiens' song as she watered some sickly pelargoniums she was trying to grow. 'I must be firm, very firm,' Dot had told herself. 'No husband should order his wife about in the way Larrie ordered me. He is a little, just a little inclined to tyrannise, and I shall be laying up unhappiness for myself if I do not nip it in the earliest bud.' When she saw his figure coming down the hill, she laid the baby down in the cot inside and bade Peggie give an eye to him. Then she popped on a clean muslin dress with forget-me-nots sprinkled all over it, tied the blue ribbons of her picturesque garden hat in a coquettish bow at the side of her chin, and when Larrie opened the gate she was flitting about the flower beds with an absurdly small red watering can in her hand and the gay little song on her lips. It certainly was provoking. [Illustration: "When Larrie opened the gate she was flitting about the flower beds."] He had pictured her coming to his side with eyes all wet and sorry, and asking forgiveness for being so naughty and childish. He had decided to forgive her after a time, but to show her first, quietly and gravely, how much in error she had been. And now-- 'Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly! Then heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.' and a whole gamut of lilts and trills of her own introduction. Larrie closed his lips very tightly and strode past her into the house. 'I might have known she would turn into that kind of woman,' he muttered, casting off his straw hat in the dining-room. 'A man never knows a girl till he's married to her, she never shows herself in a true light before.' He went into an adjoining bedroom for a linen coat to get cool in. Baby was disporting himself in the high-sided cot; his little legs were bare and kicking against the pillows, his arms were bare, and his soft, sweet neck. Such a gurgle and chirrup of welcome he gave his father! He banged his heels on the iron, he gave a rapturous little leap, and said 'Googul, googul, googul.' Larrie glanced half-shamefacedly through the window to make sure Dot could not see, and then he went over to the cot and said glad responsive 'googuls,' and submitted his crisp curls to the wee fingers, and tossed him about in his arms. But when the dinner-bell rang he laid him down in a hurry, and moved out of the room. Only he could not quite call up the stern 'firm' manner again.