y.

Tired! Poor fellow! he ought to have been, for he had ridden all over the
plantation that day, had written two business letters, and smoked there's
no telling how many cigars, and had only taken one little cat-nap after
dinner.

He was leaning back in his arm-chair, with his eyes fixed in mournful
meditation upon his mother's portrait (at least I thought so), when I
asked him if he was tired, and I fancied he was thinking sad thoughts of
the mother who had not been dead so very long as never to trouble the
thoughts of the living; so, laying down my slippers, I crossed the rug and
perched myself on Charlie's knee.

"Talk to me about her, Charlie dear."

"About whom, little one?" asked Charlie, turning his eyes toward me with a
little lazy look of inquiry.

"About your mother, Charlie: weren't you thinking about her just now?"

"I don't know--maybe I was. Dear mother! you don't find many women like
her now-a-days."

Reader, that was my first glimpse of Charlie's hobby. And from the
luck-less moment when I so innocently invited him to mount it, up to the
time when I forcibly compelled him to dismount from it, I had ample
opportunity to exercise my "smiling patience, sublime dignity and heroic
fortitude." Whether or not I improved my opportunities properly, I will
leave you to judge for yourself. But for two whole years "how mother did
it" seemed to be the watchword of Charlie's existence, and was the _bete
noir_ of mine.

So long as Charlie and I were in Paradise the house kept itself, and very
nicely it did it too, but by the time we were ready to come back to earth
the perfect servants, who had been taking such good care of themselves,
and our two daft selves into the bargain, were found to be sadly
demoralized. The discovery came upon us gradually. I think my husband
noticed the decadence as soon as I did, but I wasn't going to invite his
attention to the fact; and he, I suppose, thought that I thought that
everything was just as it should be.

One of Charlie's inherited manias was for early rising--a habit which
would have been highly commendable and undeniably invaluable in a laboring
man, but which struck me, who had an equally strong mania for not rising
early, as extremely inconvenient and the least little bit absurd. Charlie
got up early simply because "mother did it" before him; and after he had
risen at earliest dawn and dressed himself, he had nothing better to do
than walk out on the front galle