t like it for its own sake, half so well as such a wish for
it. Dear John, your wishes are as real to me as the wishes in the Fairy
story, that were all fulfilled as soon as spoken. Wish me everything
that you can wish for the woman you dearly love, and I have as good as
got it, John. I have better than got it, John!'

They were not the less happy for such talk, and home was not the less
home for coming after it. Bella was fast developing a perfect genius
for home. All the loves and graces seemed (her husband thought) to have
taken domestic service with her, and to help her to make home engaging.

Her married life glided happily on. She was alone all day, for, after an
early breakfast her husband repaired every morning to the City, and did
not return until their late dinner hour. He was 'in a China house,' he
explained to Bella: which she found quite satisfactory, without pursuing
the China house into minuter details than a wholesale vision of tea,
rice, odd-smelling silks, carved boxes, and tight-eyed people in more
than double-soled shoes, with their pigtails pulling their heads of
hair off, painted on transparent porcelain. She always walked with her
husband to the railroad, and was always there again to meet him; her old
coquettish ways a little sobered down (but not much), and her dress
as daintily managed as if she managed nothing else. But, John gone to
business and Bella returned home, the dress would be laid aside, trim
little wrappers and aprons would be substituted, and Bella, putting back
her hair with both hands, as if she were making the most business-like
arrangements for going dramatically distracted, would enter on the
household affairs of the day. Such weighing and mixing and chopping
and grating, such dusting and washing and polishing, such snipping
and weeding and trowelling and other small gardening, such making and
mending and folding and airing, such diverse arrangements, and above all
such severe study! For Mrs J. R., who had never been wont to do too much
at home as Miss B. W., was under the constant necessity of referring for
advice and support to a sage volume entitled The Complete British Family
Housewife, which she would sit consulting, with her elbows on the table
and her temples on her hands, like some perplexed enchantress poring
over the Black Art. This, principally because the Complete British
Housewife, however sound a Briton at heart, was by no means an expert
Briton at expressing her