“I don’t approve on’t, but he might do wuss. We all have to have our comfort somehow, so I let Lisha smoke as much as he likes, and he lets me gab, so it’s about fair, I reckon,” answered Mrs. Wilkins, from the suds. She laughed as she spoke, but something in her face made Christie suspect that at some period of his life Lisha had done “wuss;” and subsequent observations confirmed this suspicion and another one also,—that his good wife had saved him, and was gently easing him back to self-control and self-respect. But, as old Fuller quaintly says, “She so gently folded up his faults in silence that few guessed them,” and loyally paid him that respect which she desired others to bestow. It was always “Lisha and me,” “I’ll ask my husband” or “Lisha’ll know; he don’t say much, but he’s a dreadful smart man,” and she kept up the fiction so dear to her wifely soul by endowing him with her own virtues, and giving him the credit of her own intelligence. Christie loved her all the better for this devotion, and for her sake treated Mr. Wilkins as if he possessed the strength of Samson and the wisdom of Solomon. He received her respect as if it was his due, and now and then graciously accorded her a few words beyond the usual scanty allowance of morning and evening greetings. At his shop all day, she only saw him at meals and sometimes of an evening, for Mrs. Wilkins tried to keep him at home safe from temptation, and Christie helped her by reading, talking, and frolicking with the children, so that he might find home attractive. He loved his babies and would even relinquish his precious pipe for a time to ride the little chaps on his foot, or amuse Vic with shadow rabbit’s on the wall. At such times the entire content in Mrs. Wilkins’s face made tobacco fumes endurable, and the burden of a dull man’s presence less oppressive to Christie, who loved to pay her debts in something besides money. As they sat together finishing off some delicate laces that Saturday afternoon, Mrs. Wilkins said, “Ef it’s fair to-morrow I want you to go to my meetin’ and hear my minister. It’ll do you good.” “Who is he?” “Mr. Power.” Christie looked rather startled, for she had heard of Thomas Power as a rampant radical and infidel of the deepest dye, and been warned never to visit that den of iniquity called his free church. “Why, Mrs. Wilkins, you don’t mean it!” she said, leaving her lace to dry at the most critical stage. “Yee, I do!” answered Mrs. Wilkins, setting down her flat-iron with emphasis, and evidently preparing to fight valiantly for her minister, as most women will. “I beg your pardon; I was a little surprised, for I’d heard all sorts of things about him,” Christie hastened to say. “Did you ever hear him, or read any of his writins?” demanded Mrs. Wilkins, with a calmer air. “Never.”