rom start to finish."

In which surmise Brinley was wrong. Mrs. B. did know it, and when two
weeks later Ellen became absolutely impossible, and demanded a
kitchen-maid as the perquisite of a twenty-dollar cook, Mrs. Brinley
didn't think of calling upon her husband to perform the function of the
executioner, but like a brave woman actually summoned the cook into her
presence and did it herself. A less courageous woman would have gone
downstairs into the kitchen to do it.

WILKINS

It was a rather remarkable affair, taken altogether. Wilkins was not
what one would call an attractive man, and none of the young women of
Dumfries Corners who had met him had ever manifested anything but a
pronounced aversion to his society.

"I'd rather be a wall-flower than dance with Sam Wilkins," one of these
young women had said. "He not only can't dance, but, what is infinitely
worse, he doesn't know that he can't dance, and as for his
conversation--well, give me silence."

"You are perfectly right about that," said another. "Whenever I see him
about to waltz or two-step, I immediately remove myself from the scene,
and pray for the girl he's dancing with. He is a train-wrecker, and the
favorite resting-place for his heels is on some one else's foot. I've
heard that he steps on his own feet, too, he's so awkward, and I hope he
does if it hurts him as much as he hurts me when he steps on mine."

For Wilkins's sake I am very sorry to say that this feeling towards him
was invariable. I never cared much for him myself, but I felt rather
sorry for him when I perceived the persistent snubbing with which he was
everywhere received. He never seemed aware of it himself, happily,
however, and accepted my merely sympathetic attentions with that
superciliousness which always goes with conscious rectitude.

Conscious rectitude, I think, was Wilkins's trouble. He was good, and he
was aware of it, but he was not content with that. He wanted everybody
else to be good. I really believe that Wilkins could have carried on a
Platonic love affair with an auburn-haired girl for ten weeks without an
effort, he was so terribly good, which did not at all contribute to his
popularity. A fellow who talks about ritualism while walking in the
moonlight with a sentimental woman, doesn't count for much, and Wilkins
was always doing things like that. It was even whispered last winter
when he went sleigh-riding with that fascinating little widow, Mrs.
Br