ack on her worsted. She sat
with her back to me, knitting energetically, and said, in a low, but
very decisive tone, as she twitched her yarn,--

"Now if _I_ should talk in that way, people would call me _cross_,--and
that's the whole of it."

I pretended to be looking into the fire in an absent-minded state; but
Jennie's words had started a new idea. Was _that_ it? Was that the whole
matter? Was it, then, a fact, that the house, the servants, Jennie and
her worsteds, Rover and Mrs. Crowfield, were all going on pretty much as
usual, and that the only difficulty was that I was _cross_? How many
times had I encouraged Rover to lie just where he was lying when I
kicked him! How many times, in better moods, had I complimented Jennie
on her neat little fancy-works, and declared that I liked the social
companionship of ladies' work-baskets among my papers! Yes, it was
clear. After all, things were much as they had been; only I was cross.

_Cross._ I put it to myself in that simple, old-fashioned word, instead
of saying that I was out of spirits, or nervous, or using any of the
other smooth phrases with which we good Christians cover up our little
sins of temper. "Here you are, Christopher," said I to myself, "a
literary man, with a somewhat delicate nervous organization and a
sensitive stomach, and you have been eating like a sailor or a
ploughman; you have been gallivanting and merry-making and playing the
boy for two weeks; up at all sorts of irregular hours, and into all
sorts of boyish performances; and the consequence is, that, like a
thoughtless young scapegrace, you have used up in ten days the capital
of nervous energy that was meant to last you ten weeks. You can't eat
your cake and have it too, Christopher. When the nervous-fluid source of
cheerfulness, giver of pleasant sensations and pleasant views, is all
spent, you can't feel cheerful; things cannot look as they did when you
were full of life and vigor. When the tide is out, there is nothing but
unsightly, ill-smelling tide-mud, and you can't help it; but you can
keep your senses,--you can know what is the matter with you,--you can
keep from visiting your overdose of Christmas mince-pies and candies and
jocularities on the heads of Mrs. Crowfield, Rover, and Jennie, whether
in the form of virulent morality, pungent criticisms, or a free kick,
such as you just gave the poor brute."

"Come here, Rover, poor dog!" said I, extending my hand to Rover, who
cowered