ettin up of nights and roamin down five pair of
stairs to see if the watchman is up to his duty, or with his askin a
dozen times a day if I remembers how Mr. Sylvester found him and me,
well nigh starvin in Broad Street, and gave him the good word which got
him into this place? O no! O no, of course not! But _something_ has, and
while he persists in shutting out from his breast the woman he swore to
love, honor, and cherish, that woman is not bound to bear the trials of
life with patience. Every time he jumps out of his chair at the sound of
Mr. Sylvester's name, and some one is always mentionin' it, I plumps me
down on mine with an expression of my views regarding a kitchen stove
that does all its drawin' when the oven's empty."

So spake Mrs. Hopgood to her special crony and constant visitor, Mrs.
Kirkshaw of Water Street, pursing up a mouth that might have been
good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw
who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the
retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for
blow system.

"La!" quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her
employment as laundress, "show a dog that you want his bone and you'll
never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you've been a slanderin
of. Rattle on coal when the fire's low and you put it out entirely; but
be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you'll
have a hot stove afore you know it."

Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day
and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to
send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror,
lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little
daughter, Constantia Maria--so named and so called from two
grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious
as regards their resources--was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her
pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it
soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he
could roll his great eyes to his heart's content without fear of her
descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart
abounded.

On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored
to his wife's arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and
Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a f