“La!” quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her employment as laundress, “show a dog that you want his bone and you’ll never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you’ve been a slanderin of. Rattle on coal when the fire’s low and you put it out entirely; but be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you’ll have a hot stove afore you know it.” Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror, lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little daughter, Constantia Maria—so named and so called from two grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious as regards their resources—was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he could roll his great eyes to his heart’s content without fear of her descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart abounded. On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored to his wife’s arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned, and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously: “If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria to-day, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or whatever else it is you may have to do. I’ve noticed he seems a little shy with the child when you are around.” “Shy with the child when I am around! well I do declare!” exclaimed she, forgetting her late rôle in her somewhat natural indignation. “And what have I ever done to frighten Mr. Sylvester? Nothing but putting on of a clean apron, when he comes in and a dustin’ of the best chair for his use. It’s a trick of yours to get a chance of speakin’ to him alone, and I’ll not put up with it. As if it wasn’t bad enough to have a kettle with the nozzle dangling, without living with a man who has a secret he won’t share with his own wife and the mother of his innocent babe.” With a start the worthy man stared at her till he grew red in the face, probably with the effort of keeping his eyes steady for so long a time. “Who told you I had a secret?” said he. “Who told me?” and then she laughed, though in a somewhat hysterical way, and sat down in the middle of the floor and shook and shook again. “Hear the man!” she cried. And she told him the story of the placard out west and then asked him, “if he thought she didn’t remember how he used to act when he was a chasin’ up of a thief in the days when he was on the police force.”