lphia with her own people, making short
and wheezing visits only from time to time, and had not undergone a
voluntary period of suffering since the occasion of Tom's marriage,
which she had entirely approved. She had a sufficient property of her
own, and she and Tom were independent of each other in that way. Her
only other stepchild was a daughter, who had married a navy officer, and
had at this time gone out to spend three years (or less) with her
husband, who had been ordered to Japan.

It is not unfrequently noticed that in many marriages one of the persons
who choose each other as partners for life is said to have thrown
himself or herself away, and the relatives and friends look on with
dismal forebodings and ill-concealed submission. In this case it was the
wife who might have done so much better, according to public opinion.
She did not think so herself, luckily, either before marriage or
afterward, and I do not think it occurred to her to picture to herself
the sort of career which would have been her alternative. She had been
an only child, and had usually taken her own way. Some one once said
that it was a great pity that she had not been obliged to work for her
living, for she had inherited a most uncommon business talent, and,
without being disreputably keen at a bargain, her insight into the
practical working of affairs was very clear and far-reaching. Her
father, who had also been a manufacturer, like Tom's, had often said it
had been a mistake that she was a girl instead of a boy. Such executive
ability as hers is often wasted in the more contracted sphere of women,
and is apt to be more a disadvantage than a help. She was too
independent and self-reliant for a wife; it would seem at first thought
that she needed a wife herself more than she did a husband. Most men
like best the women whose natures cling and appeal to theirs for
protection. But Tom Wilson, while he did not wish to be protected
himself, liked these very qualities in his wife which would have
displeased some other men; to tell the truth, he was very much in love
with his wife just as she was. He was a successful collector of almost
everything but money, and during a great part of his life he had been an
invalid, and he had grown, as he laughingly confessed, very
old-womanish. He had been badly lamed, when a boy, by being caught in
some machinery in his father's mill, near which he was idling one
afternoon, and though he had almost entirely