given her a dog,--a fox-terrier,--and they take
ostentatiously elaborate precautions to keep it out of my garden.

I should like to assure them here that they need not be under any alarm.
I have shot one dog.

THAT BRUTE SIMMONS, By Arthur Morrison

Simmons's infamous behaviour toward his wife is still matter for
profound wonderment among the neighbours. The other women had all along
regarded him as a model husband, and certainly Mrs. Simmons was a most
conscientious wife. She toiled and slaved for that man, as any woman in
the whole street would have maintained, far more than any husband had
a right to expect. And now this was what she got for it. Perhaps he had
suddenly gone mad.

Before she married Simmons, Mrs. Simmons had been the widowed Mrs. Ford.
Ford had got a berth as donkeyman on a tramp steamer, and that steamer
had gone down with all hands off the Cape: a judgment, the widow
woman feared, for long years of contumacy, which had culminated in the
wickedness of taking to the sea, and taking to it as a donkeyman--an
immeasurable fall for a capable engine-fitter. Twelve years as Mrs.
Ford had left her still childless, and childless she remained as Mrs.
Simmons.

As for Simmons, he, it was held, was fortunate in that capable wife. He
was a moderately good carpenter and joiner, but no man of the world, and
he wanted one. Nobody could tell what might not have happened to Tommy
Simmons if there had been no Mrs. Simmons to take care of him. He was a
meek and quiet man, with a boyish face and sparse, limp whiskers. He
had no vices (even his pipe departed him after his marriage), and Mrs.
Simmons had ingrafted on him divers exotic virtues. He went solemnly to
chapel every Sunday, under a tall hat, and put a penny--one returned to
him for the purpose out of his week's wages--in the plate. Then, Mrs.
Simmons overseeing, he took off his best clothes, and brushed them with
solicitude and pains. On Saturday afternoons he cleaned the knives,
the forks, the boots, the kettles, and the windows, patiently and
conscientiously; on Tuesday evenings he took the clothes to the
mangling; and on Saturday nights he attended Mrs. Simmons in her
marketing, to carry the parcels.

Mrs. Simmons's own virtues were native and numerous. She was a wonderful
manager. Every penny of Tommy's thirty-six or thirty-eight shillings a
week was bestowed to the greatest advantage, and Tommy never ventured
to guess how much of it she saved.