y
to wearing a black alpaca dress seven years running, for her best
dress! I declared, it made me feel as if there wa'n't any sort of use
scrimping and saving as we do, to pay fifteen dollars a year to
support the minister; I told John we better not pay but five next
year, and I'd put the other ten on my back. He's got a rich wife, he
don't need much salary now. Just to think of her fur sacque, and
great handsome shawl, and here I havn't had a new cloak this ten
years--have to wear my blanket shawl to church.

"Yes, I think's much!" answered Mrs. Myers, emphatically. "She's as
proud as Lucifer, too. Mr. Eldred shook hands with me real friendly
like last Sunday, and asked 'How is the little one?'--as he always
calls my Tommy--then he introduced me to her, and she turned her head
toward me, and looked at me from head to foot, exactly as if she was
saying to herself 'Dress, twenty-five cents a yard; shawl five
dollars, hat, two dollars;' then she gave me what she'd call a bow
may be, she swept her eyelashes down, and tilted her head back,
instead of forward, and I thought I saw the least mite of a curl on
her lip, (she's got a dreadful proud mouth, anyway;) she didn't offer
to put out her hand, not she! she was afraid I'd soil her white kids,
with something less than a dozen buttons on them."

"Well, it's too bad," Mrs. Jenks said, "and he such a good Christian
man as he is--wonder what he wanted to go and marry such a wife for,
anyhow; I don't believe he more than half approves of her himself,
now he sees how she goes on, but, poor man, he's got to make the best
of it now; I shall always think everything of him though, he was so
kind to us when Peter was sick."

Mrs. Eldred was not entirely ignorant of the duties expected from a
minister's wife, but she had resolved, as far as she was concerned,
to ignore them. Because she had married a minister was no sign that
she was to be subject to the whims of a whole parish; she could
consider herself bound by no rules that did not apply equally as well
to every other member of the church. Her mother had forewarned her,
and advised her to this course:

"A minister's wife, my dear," said the worldly-wise mother, "is
usually a slave. So just put your foot down in the beginning, and
don't wear yourself out. Enjoy yourself all you can. Poor child! it
is a dismal life at best that you have chosen for yourself, I fear."

Mrs. Eldred did not state her peculiar views to her husband