ght 'twas best to wait till Mr. Ware's visit.
Ouch! My goodness gracious, Persis! You must take my arm for a
pin-cushion."

This time Persis' contrition was not assumed.

"I'm awfully sorry, Mis' Hornblower. The lining's so thin. I'll have
the sleeve off in a shake before it gets spotted."

"That'll have to be bandaged," exclaimed Mrs. Hornblower, surveying her
injured arm in the mirror with a not unnatural annoyance. "A little
prick is to be expected now and then when you're dress-making, but this
was a regular jab. I don't know what ails you, Persis. Looks like
your mind must have been running on Thomas Hardin."

Persis' unwonted humility was disarming, and by dinner-time Mrs.
Hornblower was sufficiently recovered to be patronizing.

"Of course this foulard is a sort of make-shift, you might say, Persis.
It'll do me till I have a chance to get something real up-to-date and
dressy in Paris."

Persis, laying down her work as the clock struck twelve, had no reply
to make, and Robert Hornblower, whose punctuality at meals was notable,
a characteristic shared by all henpecked husbands, entered the house at
that moment, casting a quick glance at his wife's face as a sailor
watches the sky for signs of a squall.

"We've spent the morning fixing up your favorite gown, so as it'll be
pretty near as good as new," Persis informed him, as she accepted a
well-filled plate at his hands. Then as the farmer looked a little
blank, she directed his attention to the renovated lavender foulard
hanging over a chair.

Mr. Hornblower's expression was still vague. "Oh, you mean that pink--"

The women interrupted him with a derisive cry of "Pink!" But while
Persis laughed, Mrs. Hornblower flashed upon her husband a look of
ineffable scorn.

"As if I'd ever wore pink or ever would, a color for children."

"Them bright colors is all one to me," said the unhappy Mr. Hornblower,
proceeding with fatal facility to make a bad matter worse. "They're
all too kind of flashy. Now, my mother used to have a dress," he
continued, meeting Persis' sympathetic gaze, "that suited me down to
the ground. Satin, it was, or maybe 'twas silk or velvet. Anyhow, it
looked rich. And it was sort of silvery, and then again, darker'n
silver and sort of ripply and shiny--"

"Robert ain't very well posted on names," said Robert's wife with
deadly calm. "But he knows what he likes, same as most men, and that
lavender foulard has always been h