Lisha sat eating a late breakfast one morning, with a small son at either elbow, waiting for stray mouthfuls and committing petty larcenies right and left, for Pa was in a brown study. Mrs. Wilkins was frying flap-jacks, and though this is not considered an heroical employment she made it so that day. This was a favorite dish of Lisha’s, and she had prepared it as a bait for this cautious fish. To say that the fish rose at once and swallowed the bait, hook and all, but feebly expresses the justice done to the cakes by that long-suffering man. Waiting till he had a tempting pile of the lightest, brownest flapjacks ever seen upon his plate, and was watching an extra big bit of butter melt luxuriously into the warm bosom of the upper one, with a face as benign as if some of the molasses he was trickling over them had been absorbed into his nature, Mrs. Wilkins seized the propitious moment to say impressively: “David Sterlin’ has enlisted!” “Sho! has he, though?” “Of course he has! any man with the spirit of a muskeeter would.” “Well, he ain’t got a family, you see.” “He’s got his old mother, that sister home from furrin’ parts somewheres, and Christie just going to be married. I should like to know who’s got a harder family to leave than that?” “Six young children is harder: ef I went fifin’ and drummin’ off, who’d take care of them I’d like to know?” “I guess I could support the family ef I give my mind to it;” and Mrs. Wilkins turned a flapjack with an emphasis that caused her lord to bolt a hot triangle with dangerous rapidity; for well he knew very little of his money went into the common purse. She never reproached him, but the fact nettled him now; and something in the tone of her voice made that sweet morsel hard to swallow. “’Pears to me you’re in ruther a hurry to be a widder, Cynthy, shovin’ me off to git shot in this kind of a way,” growled Lisha, ill at ease. “I’d ruther be a brave man’s widder than a coward’s wife, any day!” cried the rebellious Cynthy: then she relented, and softly slid two hot cakes into his plate; adding, with her hand upon his shoulder, “Lisha, dear, I want to be proud of my husband as other women be of theirs. Every one gives somethin’, I’ve only got you, and I want to do my share, and do it hearty.” She went back to her work, and Mr. Wilkins sat thoughtfully stroking the curly heads beside him, while the boys ravaged his plate, with no reproof, but a half audible, “My little chaps, my little chaps!” She thought she had got him, and smiled to herself, even while a great tear sputtered on the griddle at those last words of his. Imagine her dismay, when, having consumed the bait, her fish gave signs of breaking the line, and escaping after all; for Mr. Wilkins pushed back his chair, and said slowly, as he filled his pipe: “I’m blest ef I can see the sense of a lot of decent men going off to be froze, and starved, and blowed up jest for them confounded niggers.”