ve me, don't you?" she would say,
and his answer might be "I have told you that fifty times already;" to
which she would reply, gleefully, "That is not often, I say it all day
to myself."

Exasperating? Yes, that was the word. Long before summer came, the
doctor knew that he had given himself into the hands of a tyrant. It was
idle his saying that this irregularity and that carelessness were habits
that had become part of him; she only rocked her arms impatiently, and
if he would not stand still to be put to rights, then she would follow
him along the street, brushing him as he walked, a sight that was
witnessed several times while he was in the mutinous stage.

"Talk about masterfulness," he would say, when she whipped off his coat
or made a dart at the mud on his trousers; "you are the most masterful
little besom I ever clapped eyes on."

But as he said it he perhaps crossed his legs, and she immediately
cried, "You have missed two holes in lacing your boots!"

Of a morning he would ask her sarcastically to examine him from top to
toe and see if he would do, and examine him she did, turning him round,
pointing out that he had been sitting "again" on his tails, that oh, oh,
he must have cut that buttonhole with his knife. He became most artful
in hiding deficiencies from her, but her suspicions once roused would
not sleep, and all subterfuge was vain. "Why have you buttoned your coat
up tight to the throat to-day?" she would demand sternly.

"It is such a cold morning," he said.

"That is not the reason," she replied at once (she could see through
broadcloth at a glance), "I believe you have on the old necktie again,
and you promised to buy a new one."

"I always forget about it when I'm out," he said humbly, and next
evening he found on his table a new tie, made by Grizel herself out of
her mamma's rokelay.

It was related by one who had dropped in at the doctor's house
unexpectedly, that he found Grizel making a new shirt, and forcing the
doctor to try on the sleeves while they were still in the pin stage.

She soon knew his every want, and just as he was beginning to want it,
there it was at his elbow. He realized what a study she had made of him
when he heard her talking of his favorite dishes and his favorite seat,
and his way of biting his underlip when in thought, and how hard he was
on his left cuff. It had been one of his boasts that he had no favorite
dishes, etc., but he saw now that he had been a