th a heart worthy of her countrywomen,
and with as much success as the burden of a despondent husband would
allow to her. William John Fleming was simply a poor farmer, for whom the
wheels of the world went too fast:--a big man, appearing to be difficult
to kill, though deeply smitten. His cheeks bloomed in spite of lines and
stains, and his large, quietly dilated, brown ox-eyes, that never gave
out a meaning, seldom showed as if they had taken one from what they saw.
Until his wife was lost to him, he believed that he had a mighty
grievance against her; but as he was not wordy, and was by nature kind,
it was her comfort to die and not to know it. This grievance was rooted
in the idea that she was ruinously extravagant. The sight of the
plentiful table was sore to him; the hungry mouths, though he grudged to
his offspring nothing that he could pay for, were an afflicting prospect.
"Plump 'em up, and make 'em dainty," he advanced in contravention of his
wife's talk of bread and beef.

But he did not complain. If it came to an argument, the farmer sidled
into a secure corner of prophecy, and bade his wife to see what would
come of having dainty children. He could not deny that bread and beef
made blood, and were cheaper than the port-wine which doctors were in the
habit of ordering for this and that delicate person in the neighbourhood;
so he was compelled to have recourse to secret discontent. The attention,
the time, and the trifles of money shed upon the flower garden, were
hardships easier to bear. He liked flowers, and he liked to hear the
praise of his wife's horticultural skill. The garden was a distinguishing
thing to the farm, and when on a Sunday he walked home from church among
full June roses, he felt the odour of them to be so like his imagined
sensations of prosperity, that the deception was worth its cost. Yet the
garden in its bloom revived a cruel blow. His wife had once wounded his
vanity. The massed vanity of a silent man, when it does take a wound,
desires a giant's vengeance; but as one can scarcely seek to enjoy that
monstrous gratification when one's wife is the offender, the farmer
escaped from his dilemma by going apart into a turnip-field, and
swearing, with his fist outstretched, never to forget it. His wife had
asked him, seeing that the garden flourished and the farm decayed, to
yield the labour of the farm to the garden; in fact, to turn nurseryman
under his wife's direction. The woman could n