l that we'd
been put out, and we'd had our two ways, and we had spoken our sharp
words like any other two folks, and this wasn't our first quarrel by any
means.

I tell you, Johnny, young folks they start in life with very pretty
ideas,--very pretty. But take it as a general thing, they don't know any
more what they're talking about than they do about each other, and they
don't know any more about each other than they do about the man in the
moon. They begin very nice, with their new carpets and teaspoons, and a
little mending to do, and coming home early evenings to talk; but by and
by the shine wears off. Then come the babies, and worry and wear and
temper. About that time they begin to be a little acquainted, and to
find out that there are two wills and two sets of habits to be fitted
somehow. It takes them anywhere along from one year to three to get
jostled down together. As for smoothing off, there's more or less of
that to be done always.

Well, I didn't sleep very well that night, dropping into naps and waking
up. The baby was worrying over his teeth every half-hour, and Nancy
getting up to walk him off to sleep in her arms,--it was the only way
you _would_ be hushed up, and you'd lie and yell till somebody did it.

Now, it wasn't many times since we'd been married that I had let her do
that thing all night long. I used to have a way of getting up to take my
turn, and sending her off to sleep. It isn't a man's business, some
folks say. I don't know anything about that; maybe, if I'd been broiling
my brain in book learning all day till come night, and I was hard put to
it to get my sleep anyhow, like the parson there, it wouldn't; but all
I know is, what if I had been breaking my back in the potato-patch since
morning? so she'd broken her's over the oven; and what if I did need
nine hours' sound sleep? I could chop and saw without it next day, just
as well as she could do the ironing, to say nothing of my being a great
stout fellow,--there wasn't a chap for ten miles round with my
muscle,--and she with those blue veins on her forehead. Howsomever that
may be, I wasn't used to letting her do it by herself, and so I lay with
my eyes shut, and pretended that I was asleep; for I didn't feel like
giving in, and speaking up gentle, not about that nor anything else.

I could see her though, between my eyelashes, and I lay there, every
time I woke up, and watched her walking back and forth, back and forth,
up and dow