ich he carried to the window, where
he stood with his back to his wife, looking out. He was a short man,
who made an instant impression of light eyes in a dark face. You would
have looked at him a second time in the street, and thought of him
after he had passed, so striking was the peculiar contrast. His
features were European, but his complexion, and his soft glossy black
hair, curling close and crisp to the head, betrayed a dark drop in
him, probably African. In the West Indies he would certainly have been
set down as a quadroon. There was no record of negro blood in the
family, however, no trace of any ancestor who had lived abroad; and
the three moors' heads with ivory rings through their noses which
appeared in one quarter of the scutcheon were always understood by
later generations to have been a distinction conferred for some
special butchery-business among the Saracens.

Mrs. Caldwell glanced at her husband, as he stood with his back to her
in the window, and then went on with the mending, patiently waiting
till the mood should have passed off, or she should have thought of
something with which to beguile him.

When he had finished the whisky-and-water, he turned and looked at her
with critical disapprobation.

"I wonder why it is when a woman marries she takes no more pains with
herself," he ejaculated. "When I married you, you were one of the
smartest girls I ever saw."

"It would be difficult to be smart just now," she answered.

He made a gesture of impatience. "But why should a woman give up
everything when she marries? You had more accomplishments than most of
them, and now all you do, it seems to me, is the mending."

"The mending must be done," she answered deprecatingly, "and I'm not
very strong. I'm not able to do everything. I would if I could."

There was a wild stampede at this moment. The four elder children had
returned from school, and the two younger ones from a walk with their
nurse, and now burst into the room, in wild spirits, demanding dinner.
It was the first bright moment of the morning for their mother, but
her husband promptly spoilt her pleasure.

"Sit down at table," he roared, "and don't let me hear another word
from any of you. A man comes home to be quiet, and this is the kind of
thing that awaits him!"

The children shrank to their places abashed, while their mother
escaped to the kitchen to hurry the dinner. The form--or farce--of
grace was gone through before the meal