“Well, I don’t see much of a joke in that,” said Ingram.

“Who said there was any joke in it?” cried Lavender impatiently.  “I never knew such a cantankerous fellow as you are.  You are always fancying I am finding fault with Sheila; and I never do anything of the kind.  She is a very good girl indeed.  I have every reason to be satisfied with the way our marriage has turned out.”

“Has she?”

The words were not important, but there was something in the tone in which they were spoken that suddenly checked Frank Lavender’s careless flow of speech.  He looked at Ingram for a moment with some surprise, and then he said, “What do you mean?”

“Well, I will tell you what I mean,” said Ingram slowly.  “It is an awkward thing for a man to interfere between husband and wife, I am aware—­he gets something else than thanks for his pains ordinarily—­but sometimes it has to be done, thanks or kicks.  Now, you know, Lavender, I had a good deal to do with helping forward your marriage in the North; and I don’t remind you of that to claim anything in the way of consideration, but to explain why I think I am called on to speak to you now.”

Lavender was at once a little frightened and a little irritated.  He half guessed what might be coming from the slow and precise manner in which Ingram talked.  That form of speech had vexed him many a time before, for he would rather have had any amount of wild contention and bandying about of reproaches than the calm, unimpassioned and sententious setting forth of his shortcomings to which this sallow little man was perhaps too much addicted.

“I suppose Sheila has been complaining to you, then?” said Lavender hotly.

“You may suppose what absurdities you like,” said Ingram quietly; “but it would be a good deal better if you would listen to me patiently, and deal in a common-sense fashion with what I have got to say.  It is nothing very desperate.  Nothing has happened that is not of easy remedy, while the remedy would leave you and her in a much better position, both as regards your own estimation of yourselves and the opinion of your friends.”

“You are a little roundabout, Ingram,” said Lavender, “and ornate.  But I suppose all lectures begin so.  Go on.”

Ingram laughed:  “If I am too formal, it is because I don’t want to make mischief by any exaggeration.  Look here!  A long time before you were married I warned you that Sheila had very keen and sensitive notions about the duties that people ought to perform, about the dignity of labor, about the proper occupations of a man, and so forth.  These notions you may regard as romantic and absurd, if you like, but you might as well try to change the color of her eyes as attempt to alter any of her beliefs in that direction.”

“And she thinks that I am idle and indolent because I don’t care what a washerwoman pays for her candles?” said Lavender with impetuous contempt.  “Well, be it so.  She is welcome to her opinion.  But if she is grieved at heart because I can’t make hobnailed boots, it seems to me that she might as well come and complain to myself, instead of going and detailing her wrongs to a third person, and calling for his sympathy in the character of an injured wife.”