“Now, what I will say for you, my dear,” the cherub pursued mildly and without a notion of complaining, “is, that you are so adaptable. So adaptable.”

“Indeed I am afraid I have shown a wretched temper, Pa. I am afraid I have been very complaining, and very capricious. I seldom or never thought of it before. But when I sat in the carriage just now and saw you coming along the pavement, I reproached myself.”

“Not at all, my dear. Don’t speak of such a thing.”

A happy and a chatty man was Pa in his new clothes that day. Take it for all in all, it was perhaps the happiest day he had ever known in his life; not even excepting that on which his heroic partner had approached the nuptial altar to the tune of the Dead March in Saul.