But he did not complain.  If it came to an argument, the farmer sidled into a secure corner of prophecy, and bade his wife to see what would come of having dainty children.  He could not deny that bread and beef made blood, and were cheaper than the port-wine which doctors were in the habit of ordering for this and that delicate person in the neighbourhood; so he was compelled to have recourse to secret discontent.  The attention, the time, and the trifles of money shed upon the flower garden, were hardships easier to bear.  He liked flowers, and he liked to hear the praise of his wife’s horticultural skill.  The garden was a distinguishing thing to the farm, and when on a Sunday he walked home from church among full June roses, he felt the odour of them to be so like his imagined sensations of prosperity, that the deception was worth its cost.  Yet the garden in its bloom revived a cruel blow.  His wife had once wounded his vanity.  The massed vanity of a silent man, when it does take a wound, desires a giant’s vengeance; but as one can scarcely seek to enjoy that monstrous gratification when one’s wife is the offender, the farmer escaped from his dilemma by going apart into a turnip-field, and swearing, with his fist outstretched, never to forget it.  His wife had asked him, seeing that the garden flourished and the farm decayed, to yield the labour of the farm to the garden; in fact, to turn nurseryman under his wife’s direction.  The woman could not see that her garden drained the farm already, distracted the farm, and most evidently impoverished him.  She could not understand, that in permitting her, while he sweated fruitlessly, to give herself up to the occupation of a lady, he had followed the promptings of his native kindness, and certainly not of his native wisdom.  That she should deem herself `best man’ of the two, and suggest his stamping his name to such an opinion before the world, was an outrage.

Mrs. Fleming was failing in health.  On that plea, with the solemnity suited to the autumn of her allotted days, she persuaded her husband to advertise for an assistant, who would pay a small sum of money to learn sound farming, and hear arguments in favour of the Corn Laws.  To please her, he threw seven shillings away upon an advertisement, and laughed when the advertisement was answered, remarking that he doubted much whether good would come of dealings with strangers.  A young man, calling himself Robert Armstrong, underwent a presentation to the family.  He paid the stipulated sum, and was soon enrolled as one of them.  He was of a guardsman’s height and a cricketer’s suppleness, a drinker of water, and apparently the victim of a dislike of his species; for he spoke of the great night-lighted city with a horror that did not seem to be an estimable point in him, as judged by a pair of damsels for whom the mysterious metropolis flew with fiery fringes through dark space, in their dreams.

In other respects, the stranger was well thought of, as being handsome and sedate.  He talked fondly of one friend that he had, an officer in the army, which was considered pardonably vain.  He did not reach to the ideal of his sex which had been formed by the sisters; but Mrs. Fleming, trusting to her divination of his sex’s character, whispered a mother’s word about him to her husband a little while before her death.