good-natured if she had ever given it an opportunity. But Mrs. Kirkshaw who passed for a gossip with her neighbors, was a philosopher in the retirement of the domestic circle and did not believe in the blow for blow system.
“La!” quoth she, with a smoothing out of her apron suggestive of her employment as laundress, “show a dog that you want his bone and you’ll never get it. Husbands is like that very stove you’ve been a slanderin of. Rattle on coal when the fire’s low and you put it out entirely; but be a bit patient and drop it on piece by piece, coaxing-like, and you’ll have a hot stove afore you know it.”
Which suggestion struck Mrs. Hopgood like a revelation, and for a day and night she resorted to the coaxing system; the result of which was to send Mr. Hopgood out of the room to sit on the stairs in mortal terror, lest his good nature should get the better of his discretion. His little daughter, Constantia Maria—so named and so called from two grandmothers, equally exacting in their claims and equally impecunious as regards their resources—was his sole solace in this long vigil. Her pretty innocent prattle scarcely disturbed his meditation, while it soothed his nerves, and with no one by but this unsuspecting child, he could roll his great eyes to his heart’s content without fear of her descrying anything in them, but the love with which her own little heart abounded.
On the morning after the funeral, however, Constantia Maria was restored to his wife’s arms on the plea that she did not seem quite well, and Hopgood went out and sat alone. In a few minutes, however, he returned, and ambling restlessly up and down the room, stopped before his persistently smiling wife and said somewhat tremulously:
“If Mr. Sylvester takes a notion to come up and see Constantia Maria today, I hope you’ll take the opportunity to finish your ironing or