st that the good fellow could
get to an apology, and it touched me a good deal. I did my part, and
praised my hostess's charm and beauty, and expressed gratitude for the
warmth of my welcome.

But now that I have had time to reflect on the situation, I am not at
all sure that the Major is not to be congratulated after all. He has
got before him a perfectly definite occupation, and one which he will
fulfil with all the generosity of his nature. He was a lonely man
before his marriage, and, like all lonely men, was becoming somewhat
self-absorbed. Now his work is cut out for him. He has got to make the
best of a tiresome and unsympathetic wife. I will venture to say that
if the Major lives to be eighty, his wife will never suspect that he
does not adore and admire her. He will never say a harsh or unkind or
critical thing to her. He may induce her, perhaps, by gentle precepts,
to moderate her complacency; and perhaps, too, they will have children,
and some kind affection may awake in his shallow little partner's
heart. The Major will make a perfect father, and he will find in his
children, if only they inherit something of his own wise and tender
nature, a deep and lasting joy. I think that if he had married an
adoring and sympathetic wife, he might almost have grown
exacting--perhaps even selfish, because he is the sort of man that
requires to have the best part of him evoked. He is unambitious and in
a way indolent; and if everything had been done for him--his wishes
anticipated, sympathy lavished upon him--he would have had no region in
which to exercise that self-restraint which is now a necessity of the
case. We are very liable to try and arrange the lives of others for
them, and to think we could have done better for them than Providence;
and since I have pondered over the situation, I am inclined to be
ashamed of myself for feeling the regret which I began by feeling. If
there was any weakness in my friend's mind, if I thought that he would
grow irritable, harsh, impatient with his silly wife, it would be
different. But he will have to stand between her and the world; she
will shock and distress all his finer feelings and instincts of
propriety. They will go and pay visits, and he will have to hear her
saying all sorts of trivial and vulgar things. He will make himself
into a kind guardian and interpreter and champion for this foolish
young woman. She will try his patience, his endurance, his chivalry to
the utter