“You’re right there, Marthy,” he answered again, meekly enough.

“Do you know, Miss Graystone, that I’d never had this two thousand dollars, that I’ve managed to scrape together, if that smart, managing woman of mine hadn’t scrimped and saved beyond everything you ever saw.  ’Taint every man that’s got a treasure like mine, I can tell you.”

And truly they had not, for it does not often fall to the lot of mortal man to find in one little, insignificant figure, dwarfish alike in soul and body, such a compound of selfishness, duplicity, meanness, and vulgarity, as was centered in the object of that gentleman’s affection.

Of the many conjugal scenes to which Clemence was an unwilling witness, varying from light skirmishes over the breakfast-table, to hysterics and a doctor, with the neighbors called in, in the evening, it would be impossible to speak at length.  It has been affirmed, that, in time, one will get accustomed to anything, and Clemence had attained to such a proficiency in maintaining a non-committal air, that these little diversions would not have disturbed her equanimity, as she solaced herself with the reflection that, “after a storm comes a calm,” but for the fact that this belligerent couple had an unhappy faculty of making up their differences at the expense of a third party, and it became her unhappy fate, as the last new comer, to stand in the place Johnny had formerly been devoted to, as the unfortunate third.  Happily, however, for her nerves, her stay was short with these inhospitable entertainers.

“Where are you going when you leave here, Miss Graystone,” asked Mrs. Brier, on the last morning of her stay.

“To Mrs. Hardyng’s,” said Clemence, with a sigh of relief.

“Possible!” was the exclamation, “seems to me your one of the favored ones.  No other teacher ever went there before.  She don’t patronize the school, and keeps herself to herself pretty much.  I hear she’s took quite a notion to you.  Is it true?”

“I believe we are very good friends,” said Clemence.

“Do you know anything about her,” was the next query.  “Strikes me, I’d want to find out who I’d struck up an intimacy with, if I was in your place, and if you have learned anything about that singular woman, your smarter than the whole town of Waveland put together.  It looks suspicious to me to see anybody so close mouthed about their affairs; looks as if they wouldn’t stand investigation, and they’re afraid to let ’em see daylight.  I like things all fair and above-board, myself.

“Brier, come to breakfast.  It’s getting stone-cold.  Never mind that young’un, he’s gone to take the cow to pasture, and I can give him a piece when he comes back.”

Obedient to the summons, the gentleman in question laid down a damp copy of the Weekly Clarion, and seated himself at the table.  After glibly repeating a few words, of which Clemence could only distinguish “food spread before us,” and “duly thankful,” he asked, pausing and balancing a saucer of coffee with great dexterity on the palm of his right hand,