o's he could
git that steer out o' the way immejate."

The proposal to lay the mottoes aside was a master-stroke.

The aggrieved wife had already begun to wipe her hands on her apron.
Still, she would not seem too easily appeased.

"I do hope you 'ain't gone an' turned that whole steer into perforated
paper, Enoch, even ef 'tis Bible-texted over."

Thus she guarded her dignity. But even as she spoke she took the parcel
from his hands. This was encouragement enough. It presaged a thawing
out. And after Enoch had gone out to light the lantern, it would have
amused a sympathetic observer to watch her gradual melting as she looked
over the mottoes:

"A VIRTUOUS WIFE IS FAR ABOVE RUBIES."

"A PRUDENT WIFE IS FROM THE LORD."

"BETTER A DINNER OF HERBS WHERE LOVE IS--"

She read them over and over. Then she laid them aside and looked at
Enoch's plate. Then she looked at the chicken-dish, and now at the bowl
of gruel which she had carefully set on the back of the stove to keep
warm.

"Don't know ez it would hurt 'im any ef I'd thicken that gruel up into
mush. He's took sech a distaste to soft food sense he's got that new
set."

She rose as she spoke, poured the gruel back into the pot, sifted and
mixed a spoonful of meal and stirred it in. This done, she hesitated,
glanced at the pile of mottoes, and reflected. Then with a sudden
resolve she seized the milk-pitcher, filled a cup from it, poured the
milk into the little pot of mush, hastily whipped up two eggs with some
sugar, added the mixture to the pot, returned the whole to the yellow
bowl, and set it in the oven to brown.

And just then Enoch came in, and approached the water-shelf.

"Don't keer how you polish it, a brass lantern an' coal ile is like
murder on a man's hands. It will out."

He was thinking of the gruel, and putting off the evil hour. It had been
his intention to boldly announce that he hadn't taken his medicine, that
he never would again unless he needed it, and, moreover, that he was
going to eat his supper to-night, and always, as long as God should
spare him, etc., etc., etc.

But he had no sooner found himself in the presence of long-confessed
superior powers than he knew that he would never do any of these things.

His wife was thinking of the gruel too when she encouraged delay by
remarking that he would better rest up a bit before eating.

"And I reckon you better soak yo' hands good. Take a pinch o' that bran
out o' t