giddy head would very
soon give way beneath the task. It is a science in itself. Besides, I
swore before the parson I would take you 'for better or worse.' You see
how I keep my word. Look there now! The thread has tied itself into a
knot again. Now, if one of your parlour-maids had been holding it, you
would have been angry with her, but as my darling little wife it is not
lawful for you to be angry. Do you hear me? It is not lawful for you to
be angry with me, I say."

The little lady undid the knot again, and her husband tenderly kissed
the little intervening hand as it drew nearer; the little lady affected
not to have observed this, but she knew it well enough.

"Look now, my darling! it is you who have taught me to consider myself
an extraordinary fine fellow. Formerly, when people used to say: General
Vertessy is such and such a man, I only used to hold my tongue and think
to myself: Talk away! talk away! _I_ happen to know that Vertessy is as
timid as a child, there is one thing he is as much in dread of as any
schoolgirl, and that is--unravelling a skein of thread. When I was a
little chap I twice ran away from home to avoid this very thing. And now
my dear little spouse has made it quite clear to me that General
Vertessy is _not_ afraid of it after all. Honour to whom honour is due!
General Vertessy is a brave man."

"Naturally; why the thirteenth labour of Hercules brought him more fame
than all the rest--don't you remember how he held the skeins of Madame
Omphale?"

"That was the greatest of his heroic exploits, certainly. You ladies
cannot imagine what tyranny you practice upon the masculine gender when
you constrain them to this terrible servitude. To wear chains is a mere
jest, but when you bind a man with a skein of thread, a mere gossamer,
in fact, and then tell him he must not break it asunder, that is cruelty
indeed! Why don't the English invent a machine for this sort of hard
labour? They rack their brains about steamboats, about woman's rights,
and the emancipation of the negro; but as to _these_ fetters, these..."

"Come, come, attend to your skein!"

And indeed those dangerous fetters, as the General called them, were
themselves in great danger, for the General in his ardour had made a
slight gesture which had almost ripped them asunder.

"I'll take it away from you if you don't behave yourself properly. Fancy
making such lamentations over a little skein-unravelling!"

"Oh, I am not speaki