py here."

"Not happy?" she said, with a half-frightened look,--"what makes you say
so? Oh, you are mistaken. I have everything to make me happy. I should
be very unreasonable and wicked, if I were not. I am very, very happy, I
assure you. Of course, you know, everybody can't be like our folks at
home. _That_ I should not expect, you know,--people's ways are
different,--but then, when you know people are so good, and all that,
why, of course you must be thankful, be happy. It's better for me to
learn to control my feelings, you know, and not give way to impulses.
They are all so good here, they never give way to their feelings,--they
always do right. Oh, they are quite wonderful!"

"And agreeable?" said I.

"Oh, Chris, we mustn't think so much of that. They certainly aren't
pleasant and easy, as people at home are; but they are never cross, they
never scold, they always are good. And we oughtn't to think so much of
living to be happy; we ought to think more of doing right, doing our
duty, don't you think so?"

"All undeniable truth, Emmy; but, for all that, John seems stiff as a
ramrod, and their front-parlor is like a tomb. You mustn't let them
petrify him."

Her face clouded over a little.

"John is different here from what he was at our house. He has been
brought up differently,--oh, entirely differently from what we were; and
when he comes back into the old house, the old business, and the old
place between his father and mother and sisters, he goes back into the
old ways. He loves me all the same, but he does not show it in the same
ways, and I must learn, you know, to take it on trust. He is _very_
busy,--works hard all day, and all for me; and mother says women are
unreasonable that ask any other proof of love from their husbands than
what they give by working for them all the time. She never lectures me,
but I know she thought I was a silly little petted child, and she told
me one day how she brought up John. She never petted him; she put him
away alone to sleep, from the time he was six months old; she never fed
him out of his regular hours when he was a baby, no matter how much he
cried; she never let him talk baby-talk, or have any baby-talk talked to
him, but was very careful to make him speak all his words plain from the
very first; she never encouraged him to express his love by kisses or
caresses, but taught him that the only proof of love was exact
obedience. I remember John's telling me of his ru