marry the man of her choice. The
affair would be clouded with sadness, they all believed (except Jim);
but Gabrielle was determined not to hide the opposition of her father.
She was determined to have her wedding about as she had planned from
childhood in the little church she loved, and up to the very minute of
the fixed hour she would hope and pray to have her father there full of
repentance and forgiveness. Mr. Tescheron was to be told by her one week
prior to the wedding. Thus he was to be given one week alone with his
conscience to settle the question whether he should accept an invitation
to his daughter's wedding. More than a week's notice, Gabrielle
believed, would inflict unnecessary cruelty and less than a week grant
hardly enough time for him to retrace his steps.

Mrs. Tescheron, poor soul, spent many hours in tears, her faith and
pride in her daughter sustaining her through the hours of preparation.
The day of the wedding she dreaded, and she doubted if she would bear up
when the climax of the strain came. Firmness prompted by kindness, the
wife and mother understood to be necessary in dealing with the irascible
head of the family, and she therefore quietly acquiesced in this policy
when administered by their only child. She had never been able to
successfully make her will dominant in the household on that principle,
perhaps because she had begun by surrendering to him the first few times
he was mastered by his temper in the early days of married life, like
most wives do surrender. The baby is generally much better brought up in
the family than the father. My observation as a bachelor teaches me that
every wife should take a husband in hand like a child--coddle him, keep
him in after dark, put him to bed very early full of hot gruel when he
sneezes or falls asleep after dinner; if he complains of a draught give
him a steaming foot-bath and one or two mustard plasters, those gentle
love-taps of family life, that lingeringly long tell of devotion; and
when he has any inclination to do anything except smile, pounce upon him
and trundle him into some sort of medicated misery, tenderly but
firmly.

I could name a dozen good husbands, men of eagle eye in the market
place, who stand pat in good nature at home, because their wives make
little or no discrimination between the babies and their papa. Mrs.
Tescheron was fortunate in her daughter, however, and in later years was
relieved as the child grew to lead them