tly enjoy
the newspaper, as before, for he had already gone over them two or
three times, even to the advertising pages. Sometimes, for relief, he
would walk out again, after tea, and sometimes lounge awhile on the
sofa, and then go to bed an hour earlier than he had been in the habit
of doing. In the morning he had no motive for rising with the sun; no
effort was therefore made to overcome the heaviness felt on awaking;
and he did not rise until the ringing of the breakfast-bell.

The "laziness" of her husband, as Mrs. Parker did not hesitate so call
it, annoyed his good wife. She did not find things any easier--she
could not retire from business. In fact, the new order of things made
her a great deal more trouble. One-half of her time, as she alleged,
Mr. Parker was under her feet and making her just double work. He had
grown vastly particular, too, about his clothes, and very often
grumbled about the way his food come on the table, what she had never
before known him to do. The hatter's good lady was not very choice of
her words, and, when she chose to speak out, generally did so with
remarkable plainness of speech. The scheme of retiring from business in
the very prime of life she never approved, but as her good man had set
his heart on it for years, she did not say much in opposition. Her
remark to a neighbour showed her passive state of mind: "He has earned
his money honestly, and if he thinks he can enjoy it better in this
way, I suppose it is nobody's business."

This was just the ground she stood upon. It was a kind of neutral
ground, but she was not the woman to suffer its invasion. Just so long
as her husband came and went without complaint or interference with
her, all would be suffered to go on smoothly enough; but if he
trespassed upon her old established rights and privileges, he would
hear it.

"I never saw a meal cooked so badly as this," said Mr. Parker, knitting
his brow one rainy day, at the dinner-table.

He had been confined to the house since morning, and had tried in vain
to find some means of passing his time pleasantly.

The colour flew instantly to his wife's face. "Perhaps, if you had a
better appetite, you would see no fault in the cooking," she said
rather tartly.

"Perhaps not," he replied. "A good appetite helps bad cooking
wonderfully."

There was nothing in this to soothe his wife's temper. She retorted
instantly--

"And honest employment alone will give a good appetite. I wo