James being as near as possible a stranger, it wasn't till after we were married that I learned anything at all about him; and then only what he chose to tell me. It wasn't long, however, before I began to find out that I'd got a queer one for a husband; but how queer I don't believe I know to this very hour. I'm not one to tell tales of my own man, the father of my children, but I could tell tales which would make some people's hair stand up on end. Some of the things he's done have made me wonder if he's not in league with the devil. Not that I wasn't happy--at least until I saw that to him a woman was just nothing at all. Though he loved me in his way. But his way was such a funny one. For a week together he'd be so nice that I'd begin to think I was in Heaven. Then he'd go out, as I'd think just for a stroll, and I'd never see him again for weeks, and sometimes months. Where he went to, or what he did, he'd never tell me. And, in time, I gave up asking; because the way he treated me when I did ask made me more miserable than ever. I'm not old now. I've not been married six years, and I wasn't seventeen when I was married. And twenty-three isn't old compared to some. And I've two of the dearest little children. I believe they're a blessing God has given me to make up for what I have to bear from James. Jimmy, he's four and a half, and good as gold; and Pollie, she's three, the prettiest and best child that ever lived. They say that she takes after me; but I'm sure that I don't know. What I should do without them I tremble to think. And now here was James gone off again! He'd been giving some dreadful performance--though, to my thinking, performance was not the word--at the Royal Aquarium. Actually been to sleep for thirty days on end. It made my blood run cold to think of it. What people could see in such a thing beats me. But there--you never know. Some like all kinds of things. There was once a lady who lived near me who called herself the Boneless Wonder. She was a wonder! She'd twist herself into the most horrid shapes you ever saw. Yet she seemed to like to do it, and people paid to see her. One afternoon when I was having a cup of tea with her, she did such awful things right in front of me upon the kitchen table that I was ill for a week.