rned the art of mitigating or removing. Coming in, in better spirits
perhaps than usual, intending to have a cheerful tea and a cozy chat
after it, he would find everything in a state of disturbance, especially
his young wife's temper, with plenty of steam everywhere except from the
spout of the tea-pot. Indeed, poor Kate was one of those domestic
paradoxes in her own person and house which are specially trying to one
who cares for home comfort: and who is there who does not care for it?
She would be always cleaning, yet never clean; always smartening things
up, and yet never keeping them tidy. And so when William, on coming
home, would find pale, ghost-like linen garments hanging reeking from
the embossed arm of the gas chandelier a large piece of dissolving soap
on the centre of the table-cover, a great wooden tub in the place where
his arm-chair should be, a lump of sodden rags in one of his slippers,
and his wife toiling and fuming in the midst of all, with her hair in
papers and her elbows in suds, with scarce the faintest hope for him of
getting his evening meal served for more than an hour to come,--what
wonder if harsh words escaped him, repaid with words equally harsh from
his excited partner, and followed by his flinging himself in a rage out
of such a home, and returning near midnight with a plunging, stumbling
step on the stairs, which sent all the blood chilly back to the heart of
the unhappy woman, and quenched in sobs and tears the bitter words that
were ready to burst forth!

But at last there came the little babe, and with it a rush of returning
fondness and tenderness into the heart of both the parents; yet only for
a time. The tide of home misery had set in full again; and now on this
winter evening, a little more than a twelve-month after her marriage,
poor, unhappy Kate Foster knelt by the side of the little cradle, her
tears falling fast and thick on the small white arm of her sick baby;
for very sick it was, and she feared that death (ay, not death, but
God--her heart, her conscience said, "God,") was about to snatch from
her the object she loved best on earth, even with a passionate love.

Though it was winter and cold, yet the casement was ajar, for the
chimney of the room had smoked for weeks; but nothing had been done
towards remedying the trouble, except grumbling at it, and letting in
draughts of keen air through half-open doors and windows, to the
manifest detriment of the health of bot