id at once: "Why not tell him all this Baron told you, and
see if it wouldn't bring all his life back to him?" And then she would
have to tell the Major who he really was, to show him the need of
keeping silence about the story. No, no! Danger lay that way. Too much
finessing would be wanted; too many reserves.

So she bore her secret knowledge alone, for their sakes feeling all
the while like the scapegoat in the wilderness. But it was a happy
wilderness for her, as time proved. Her husband's temper and
disposition were well described by Sally, when she told Dr. Vereker in
confidence one day that when he boiled he blew the lid off, but that
he was a practical lamb, and was wax in her mother's hands. A good fizz
did good, whatever people said. And the doctor agreed cordially. For
he had a mother whose temper was notoriously sweetness itself, but was
manipulated by its owner with a dexterity that secured all the effects
of discomfort to its beneficiaries, without compromising her own claims
to canonization.

Fenwick's temper--this expression always means want of temper, or
absence of temper--was of the opposite sort. It occasioned no
inconvenience to any one, and every one detected and classed it after
knowing him for twenty-four hours. The married couple had not existed
for three months in that form before this trivial individuality was
defined by Ann and Cook as "only master." Sally became so callous after
a slight passing alarm at one or two explosions that she would, for
instance, address her stepfather, after hearing his volleys at
some offender in the distance, with, "Who did I hear you calling a
confounded idiot, Jeremiah?" To which he would reply, softening into
a genial smile: "Lost my temper, I did, Sarah dear. Lost my temper with
the Wash. The Wash sticks in pins and the heads are too small to get
hold of"; or, "People shouldn't lick their envelopes up to the hilt,
and spoil one's ripping-corner, unless they want a fellow to swear";
or something similar belonging to the familiar trials of daily life.

But really safety-valve tempers are so common that Fenwick's would
scarcely have called for notice if it had not been that, on one
occasion, a remark of Sally's about a rather more vigorous _emeute_
than usual led her mother, accidentally thrown off her guard, to reply:
"Yes! But you have no idea how much better he is----" and then to stop
suddenly, seeing the mistake she was making. She had no time to see
a w