but he put his foot on the potato and smashed
it.

"If I had to be shut in here with you one more day," she went on, "I'd
hate you."

"Why the one more day?" he asked, without looking up.

But she didn't answer him. She was in the worst kind of a temper; she
threw the ribbon down, and coming over, lifted the lid of my basket and
looked in.

"Ham again!" she exclaimed ungratefully. "Thanks so much for remembering
us, Minnie. I dare say our dinner to-day slipped your mind!"

"I wonder if it strikes you, Minnie," Mr. Dick said, noticing me for
the first time, "that if you and Sam hadn't been so confounded meddling,
that fellow Pierce would be washing buggies in the village livery-stable
where he belongs, and I'd be in one piece of property that's as good as
gone this minute."

"Egg salad and cheese!" said Mrs. Dick. "I'm sick of cheese. If that's
the kind of supper you've been serving--"

But I was in a bad humor, anyhow, and I'd had enough. I stood just
inside the door and I told them I'd done the best I could, not for them,
but because I'd promised the old doctor, and if I'd made mistakes I'd
answer for them to him if I ever met him in the next world. And in the
meantime I washed my hands of the whole thing, and they might make out
as best they could. I was going.

Mrs. Dick heard me through. Then she came over and put her hand on mine
where it lay on the table.

"You're perfectly right," she said. "I know how you have tried, and that
the fault is all that wretched Pierce's. You mustn't mind Mr. Carter,
Minnie. He's been in that sort of humor all day."

He looked at her with the most miserable face I ever saw, but he didn't
say anything. She sighed, the little wretch.

"We've all made mistakes," she said, "and not the least was my thinking
that I--well, never mind. I dare say we will manage somehow."

He got up then, his face twisted with misery.

"Say it," he said. "You hate me; you shiver if I touch your hand--oh,
I'm not very keen, but I saw that."

"The remedy for that is very, simple," she replied coolly. "You needn't
touch my hand."

"Stop!" I snapped. "Just stop before you say something you'll be sorry
for. Of course, you hate each other. It beats me, anyhow, why two people
who get married always want to get away by themselves until they're so
sick of each other that they don't get over it the rest of their
lives. The only sensible honeymoon I ever heard of was when one of the
chambermaids here