, lastly, heavy,
thick, lined damask curtains, which loop quite down to the floor. What's
the use of my pictures, I desire to know? They are hung in that room,
and it's a regular campaign to get light enough to see what they are."

"But, at all events, you can light them up with gas in the evening."

"In the evening! Why, do you know my wife never wants to sit there in
the evening? She says she has so much sewing to do that she and Aunt
Zeruah must sit up in the bedroom, because it wouldn't do to bring work
into the parlor. Didn't you know that? Don't you know there mustn't be
such a thing as a bit of real work ever seen in a parlor? What if some
threads should drop on the carpet? Aunt Zeruah would have to open all
the fortifications next day, and search Jerusalem with candles to find
them. No; in the evening the gas is lighted at half-cock, you know; and
if I turn it up, and bring in my newspapers and spread about me, and
pull down some books to read, I can feel the nervousness through the
chamber-door. Aunt Zeruah looks in at eight, and at a quarter past, and
at half-past, and at nine, and at ten, to see if I am done, so that she
may fold up the papers and put a book on them, and lock up the books in
their cases. Nobody ever comes in to spend an evening. They used to try
it when we were first married, but I believe the uninhabited appearance
of our parlors discouraged them. Everybody has stopped coming now, and
Aunt Zeruah says 'it is such a comfort, for now the rooms are always in
order. How poor Mrs. Crowfield lives, with her house such a
thoroughfare, she is sure she can't see. Sophie never would have
strength for it; but then, to be sure, some folks a'n't as particular as
others. Sophie was brought up in a family of _very_ particular
housekeepers.'"

My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile that has brightened
up her sofa for so many years.

Bill added, bitterly,--

"Of course, I couldn't say that I wished the whole set and system of
housekeeping women at the--what-'s-his-name? because Sophie would have
cried for a week, and been utterly forlorn and disconsolate. I know it's
not the poor girl's fault; I try sometimes to reason with her, but you
can't reason with the whole of your wife's family, to the third and
fourth generation backwards; but I'm sure it's hurting her
health,--wearing her out. Why, you know Sophie used to be the life of
our set; and now she really seems eaten up with care from morn