."

"Why, the fact is, I've promised to meet a select committee of ladies
this evening at seven o'clock, at Lady Strong's."

"What!--this evening!" exclaimed her husband. "Why, it's Christmas-eve!
Whatever can these good ladies want with one another to-night away from
their own firesides?"

"Ah now, John, that's a little hit at your poor wife. But a man with
your high sense of duty ought not to say so. You know it must be `duty
first, and pleasure afterwards.'"

"True, Agnes, where the duty is one plainly laid upon us, but not where
it is of one's own imposing. I can't help thinking that a wife's first
and chief duties lie at home."

"Oh, now, you mustn't look grave like that, and scold me. I ordered a
fly to call for me at a quarter to seven, and I shan't be gone much more
than an hour, I daresay. And you can have a good long snooze by the
dining-room fire while I'm away. I know how you enjoy a snooze."

William now appearing with the tray, she passed the tea to her husband,
and took the glass of sherry herself. A cloud settled for a moment on
the doctor's brow. He wished that the constant drain on his wife's
energies, physical and mental, could be restored by something less
perilous than these stimulants, resorted to, he could see, with
increasing frequency. But she always assured him that nothing so
reinvigorated her as just one glass of sherry.

"And what are these good ladies going to meet about?" he asked, when the
tray had been removed.

"Oh, you'll laugh, I daresay, when I tell you," she replied; "but I
assure you that they are all good and earnest workers. We are going to
discuss the best way of improving the homes of the working-classes."

"Well," said the doctor, laughing, but with a touch of mingled sarcasm
and bitterness in his voice, "I think your committee can't do better
than advise the working-women of England generally to make their homes
more attractive to their husbands, and to lead the way yourselves."

"My dearest John," exclaimed his wife, a little taken aback, "you are
cruelly hard upon us poor ladies. I declare you're getting positively
spiteful. I think we'd better change the subject.--How did you leave
our dear friends the Johnsons? And what are they doing in the north
about the `strikes' and `trades-unions'?"

"Really," he replied wearily, "I must leave the `strikes' and such
things to take care of themselves just now. The Johnsons send their
love. They were all w