By the time the story is told and she is duly consoled she has forgotten her injuries.  She loves her family, and while they are sometimes very trying, who could expect her to bear a grudge against the dear ones?  The little burst of anger over, she feels towards them as she has always felt and banishes from her mind all thought of the little occurrence.

Not so, John!  His wife (and the possessive pronoun casts about her an atmosphere of importance) has been made uncomfortable, and he is up in arms.  His and no one’s else is the right to criticise Mary.  What business have these people to interfere?  He immediately becomes his wife’s most ardent champion, and while he muses the fire burns, until he is ready to take the poor little woman away from all her inconsiderate relatives.  What is his chagrin on discovering that the woman who, but a few hours ago sobbed out to him her wrongs, has seemingly overlooked all injuries, and is just as fond of sister and brother, and quite as dependent upon “Papa and Mamma” as she ever was.  In vain he protests and calls to her mind their injustice.  Yes, she remembers it, now that he speaks of it, but the dear people meant nothing unkind, they love her dearly at heart.  For her part she could not take to heart a little thing like that.  And John remarks that if she is mean-spirited enough to pass by such an occurrence, he has nothing to say.  It is her family, thank goodness, not his!  After this, he is more quick than ever before to detect a fancied slight and to resent it.  Mary laments secretly that “John does not love her family.”  It is a genuine grief to her, and she does not appreciate the fact that she herself began the work that has now gone too far to check.

Were I to give a piece of advice to a bride, it would be—­Never complain to your husband of the actions of a single member of your family, and never find fault with his nearest of kin.  Your liege lord may disapprove of the members of his own family, or perhaps of some of his mother’s characteristics, and he may talk to you of them.  But he will hotly resent your mention of them, and will exercise all his masculine ingenuity to prove that his relatives always mean to act for the best,—­exactly what you would have him believe of your nearest and dearest.  A woman who has never had a suspicion of difference with her relations-in-law, confides to me of the course she has pursued throughout her married life.  She says: 

“I have never told Charlie that I notice the faults of his family, nor have I ever called his attention to any of their foibles.  In that way I have prevented him from feeling that he must side with them against me.  He comes to me often with the story of some difference he has had with his mother, and he talks freely of his sister’s failings and his brother’s inconsistencies.  He even sometimes gets righteously indignant, and fairly sputters.  Inwardly, I chuckle with amusement, and outwardly I appear sympathetic, but never a word do I say to commit myself.  It is his family, and if there is a row, I, to quote Young America, ‘am not in it.’”