good half hour talking with that woman, Did
you not know how late it was?"

"No, mother. If I had, I should have come in."

"I suppose you had your watch on, hadn't you?"

"Yes, mother."

"Well, I'd like to know what excuse there is for a man's not knowing what
time it is, when he has a watch in his pocket? And then you must needs
bring her in here, of all things,--when you know I hate to see people
near my meal-times, and you must have known it was near supper-time. At
any rate, watch or no watch, I suppose you didn't think you'd started to
come home in the middle of the afternoon, did you? And what did you want
her to come in for, anyhow? I'd like to know that. Answer me, will you?"

"Simply because I thought that it would give you pleasure to see some one,
mother. You often complain of being so lonely, of no one's coming in,"
replied Stephen, in a tone which was pathetic, almost shrill, from its
effort to be patient and calm.

"I wish, if you can't speak in your own voice, you wouldn't speak at all,"
said the angry woman. "What makes you change your voice so?"

Stephen made no reply. He knew very well this strange tone which sometimes
came into his voice, when his patience was tried almost beyond endurance.
He would have liked to avoid it; he was instinctively conscious that it
often betrayed to other people what he suffered. But it was beyond his
control: it seemed as if all the organs of speech involuntarily clenched
themselves, as the hand unconsciously clenches itself when a man is
enraged.

Mrs. White persisted. "Your voice, when you're angry, 's enough to drive
anybody wild. I never heard any thing like it. And I'm sure I don't see
what you have to be angry at now. I should think I was the one to be
angry. You're all I've got in the world, Stephen; and you know what a life
I lead. It isn't as if I could go about, like other women; then I
shouldn't care where you spent your time, if you didn't want to spend it
with me." And tears, partly of ill-temper, partly of real grief, rolled
down the hard, unlovely, old face.

This was only one evening. There are three hundred and sixty-five in a
year. Was not the burden too heavy for mortal man to carry?

Chapter IV.

Mercy said nothing to her mother of Mrs. White's rudeness. She merely
mentioned the fact of her having met Mr. White near the house, and having
gone with him, at his request, to speak to his mother.

"What's she like, Mercy?" asked M