am to go with our dame."

Mrs. Gaunt's face beamed with gratified pride and affection.

The chariot came round, and Griffith handed his dame in. He then gave an
involuntary sigh, and followed her with a hang-dog look.

She heard the sigh, and saw the look, and laid her hand quickly on his
shoulder, and said, gently but coldly, "Stay you at home, my dear. We
shall meet at dinner."

"As you will," said he, cheerfully: and they went their several ways. He
congratulated himself on her clemency, and his own escape.

She went along, sorrowful at having to drink so great a bliss alone; and
thought it unkind and stupid of Griffith not to yield with a good grace
if he could yield at all: and, indeed, women seem cleverer than men in
this, that, when they resign their wills, they do it graciously and not
by halves. Perhaps they are more accustomed to knock under; and you know
practice makes perfect.

But every smaller feeling was swept away by the preacher, and Mrs. Gaunt
came home full of pious and lofty thoughts.

She found her husband seated at the dinner-table, with one turnip before
him; and even that was not comestible; for it was his grandfather's
watch, with a face about the size of a new-born child's. "Forty-five
minutes past one, Kate," said he, ruefully.

"Well, why not bid them serve the dinner?" said she with an air of
consummate indifference.

"What, dine alone o' Sunday? Why, you know I couldn't eat a morsel
without you, set opposite."

Mrs. Gaunt smiled affectionately. "Well then, my dear, we had better
order dinner an hour later next Sunday."

"But that will upset the servants, and spoil their Sunday."

"And am I to be their slave?" said Mrs. Gaunt, getting a little warm.
"Dinner! dinner! What? shall I starve my soul, by hurrying away from the
oracles of God to a sirloin? O these gross appetites! how they deaden
the immortal half, and wall out Heaven's music! For my part, I wish
there was no such thing as eating and drinking. 'T is like falling from
Heaven down into the mud, to come back from such divine discourse and be
greeted with 'Dinner! dinner! dinner!'"

The next Sunday, after waiting half an hour for her, Griffith began his
dinner without her.

And this time, on her arrival, instead of remonstrating with her, he
excused himself. "Nothing," said he, "upsets a man's temper like waiting
for his dinner."

"Well, but you have not waited."

"Yes, I did, a good half-hour. Till I could wait no