question,"
he thought. "I was getting silly and sentimental with my talk about the
picture and all that. She laughed at me and reminded me I was wasting
time. Of course she can't like an old, hard-featured man like me. I'm
beginning to understand her now. She made a business marriage with me
and means to live up to her agreement. She's honest; she feels I've
done her a real kindness in giving her a home, and she's willing to be
as self-sacrificing as the day is long to make it up to me. I wish she
wasn't so grateful; there's no occasion for it. I don't want her to
feel that every pleasant word and every nice act is so much toward
paying a debt. If there was any balance in my favor it was squared up
long ago, and I was willing to call it even from the start. She's made
me like her for her own sake and not on account of what she does for
me, and that's what I had in mind. But she's my superior in every way;
she's growing to be a pretty as a picture, and I suppose I appear like
a rather rough customer. Well, I can't help if, but it rather goes
against me to have her think, 'I've married him and I'm going to do my
duty by him, just as I agreed.' She'll do her duty by this Jane in the
same self-sacrificing spirit, and will try to make it pleasant for the
child just because it's right and because she herself was taken out of
trouble. That's the shape her religion takes. 'Tisn't a common form,
I know--this returning good for good with compound interest. But her
conscience won't let her rest unless she does everything she can for
me, and now she'll begin to do everything for Jane because she feels
that self-sacrifice is a duty. Anybody can be self-sacrificing. If I
made up my mind, I could ask Mrs. Mumpson to visit us all summer, but I
couldn't like her to save my life, and I don't suppose Alida can like
me, beyond a certain point, to save her life. But she'll do her duty.
She'll be pleasant and self-sacrificing and do all the work she can lay
her hands on for my sake; but when it comes to feeling toward me as I
can't help feeling toward her--that wasn't in the bargain," and he
startled Jane with a sudden bitter laugh.

"Say," said the child, as if bent on adding another poignant
reflection, "if you hadn't married her, I could 'a' come and cooked for
you."

"You think I'd been better off if I'd waited for you, eh?"

"You kinder looked as if yer thought so."

He now made the hills echo with a laugh, excited bo