commenced. The children ate
greedily, but were obediently silent. All the little confidences and
remarks which it would have been so healthy for them to make, and so
good for their mother to hear, had to be suppressed, and the silence
and constraint made everyone dyspeptic. The dinner consisted of only
one dish, a hash, which Mrs. Caldwell had made because her husband had
liked it so much the last time they had had it. He turned it over on
his plate now, however, ominously, blaming the food for his own want
of appetite. Mrs. Caldwell knew the symptoms, and sighed.

"I can't eat this stuff," he said at last, pushing his plate away from
him.

"There's a pudding coming," his wife replied.

"Oh, a pudding!" he exclaimed. "I know what our puddings are. Why
aren't women taught something sensible? What's the use of all your
accomplishments if you can't cook the simplest dish? What a difference
it would have made to my life if you had been able to make pastry
even."

Mrs. Caldwell thought of the time she had spent on her feet in the
kitchen that morning doing her best, and she also thought how easy it
would have been for him to marry a woman who could cook, if that were
all he wanted; but she had no faint glimmering conception that it was
unreasonable to expect a woman of her class to cook her dinner as well
as eat it. One servant is not expected to do another's work in any
establishment; but a mother on a small income, the most cruelly tried
of women, is too often required to be equal to anything. Mrs. Caldwell
said nothing, however. She belonged to the days when a wife's meek
submission to anything a man chose to say made nagging a pleasant
relaxation for the man, and encouraged him to persevere until he
acquired a peculiar ease in the art, and spoilt the tempers of
everybody about him.

The arrival of the family doctor put an end to the scene. Mrs.
Caldwell told the children to run away, and her husband's countenance
cleared.

"Glad to see you, Gottley," he said. "What will you have?"

"Oh, nothing, thank you. I can't stay a moment. I just looked in to
see how Mrs. Caldwell was getting on."

"Oh, she's all right," her husband answered for her cheerfully. "How
are you all, especially Miss Bessie?"

"Ha! ha!" said the old gentleman, sitting down by the table. "That
reminds me I'm not on good terms with Bessie this morning. I'm generally
careful, you know, but it seems I said something disrespectful about a
Christ