My wife soothed the chafed spirit, and spake comfortably unto him, and told him that he knew there was the old lounging-chair always ready for him at our fireside.  “And you know,” she said, “our things are all so plain that we are never tempted to mount any guard over them; our carpets are nothing, and therefore we let the sun fade them, and live on the sunshine and the flowers.”

“That’s it,” said Bill, bitterly, “Carpets fading!—­that’s Aunt Zeruah’s monomania.  These women think that the great object of houses is to keep out sunshine.  What a fool I was, when I gloated over the prospect of our sunny south windows!  Why, man, there are three distinct sets of fortifications against the sunshine in those windows:  first, outside blinds; then, solid, folding, inside shutters; and, lastly, heavy, thick, lined damask curtains, which loop quite down to the floor.  What’s the use of my pictures, I desire to know?  They are hung in that room, and it’s a regular campaign to get light enough to see what they are.”

“But, at all events, you can light them up with gas in the evening.”

“In the evening!  Why, do you know my wife never wants to sit there in the evening?  She says she has so much sewing to do that she and Aunt Zeruah must sit up in the bedroom, because it wouldn’t do to bring work into the parlor.  Didn’t you know that?  Don’t you know there mustn’t be such a thing as a bit of real work ever seen in a parlor?  What if some threads should drop on the carpet?  Aunt Zeruah would have to open all the fortifications next day, and search Jerusalem with candles to find them.  No; in the evening the gas is lighted at half-cock, you know; and if I turn it up, and bring in my newspapers and spread about me, and pull down some books to read, I can feel the nervousness through the chamber-door.  Aunt Zeruah looks in at eight, and at a quarter past, and at half-past, and at nine, and at ten, to see if I am done, so that she may fold up the papers and put a book on them, and lock up the books in their cases.  Nobody ever comes in to spend an evening.  They used to try it when we were first married, but I believe the uninhabited appearance of our parlors discouraged them.  Everybody has stopped coming now, and Aunt Zeruah says ’it is such a comfort, for now the rooms are always in order.  How poor Mrs. Crowfield lives, with her house such a thoroughfare, she is sure she can’t see.  Sophie never would have strength for it; but then, to be sure, some folks a’n’t as particular as others.  Sophie was brought up in a family of very particular housekeepers.’”

My wife smiled, with that calm, easy, amused smile that has brightened up her sofa for so many years.

Bill added, bitterly,—­