“All other love is mockery and deceit. 
          ’Tis like the mirage of the desert that appears
          A cool refreshing water, and allures
          The thirsty traveler, but flies anon
          And leaves him disappointed, wondering
          So fair a vision should so futile prove. 
          A mother’s love is like unto a well
          Sealed and kept secret, a deep-hidden fount
          That flows when every other spring is dry."*

* Sophia Woodrooffe.

Peter Crawley, left to his own resources, practices at the County Courts in his old neighborhood, and drinks with all his clients, who are of the lowest imaginable order.  He complains that “he can’t peck,” yet continues the cause of his infirmity, living almost entirely upon cock-a-doodle broth—­eggs beat up in brandy and a little water.  Like Scipio, he is never less alone than when alone; with this difference, that the companions of P. C.’s solitude do not add to the pleasure of his existence.  Unless somebody can make him see that it is never too late to mend, this little rogue, fool and sot will “shut up like a knife some day” (so says a medical friend), and then it will be too late.

It is nine in the evening.  A little party is collected of farmers and their wives and daughters.  Mrs. George Fielding rises and says, “Now I must go home.”  Remonstrance of hostess.  “George will be at home by now.”

“Well, wait till he comes for you.”

“Oh, he won’t come, for fear of shortening my pleasure.”

Susan then explains that George is so foolish that he never will go into the house when she is not in it.  “And here is a drizzle come on, and there he will be sitting out in it, I know, if I don’t go and drive him in.”

Events justify the prediction.  The good wife finds her husband sitting on the gate kicking his heels quite contented and peaceable, only he would not pay the house the compliment of going into it when she was not there.  He told her once he looked on it as no better than a coal-hole when she was not shining up and down it.

N. B.—­They have been some years married.  A calm but very tender conjugal love sits at this innocent hearth.

George has made a great concession for an Englishman.  He has solemnly deposited before witnesses his sobriquet of “Unlucky George,” not (he was careful to explain) because he found the great nugget, nor because the meadow he bought in Bathurst for two hundred pounds has just been sold by Robinson for twelve thousand pounds, but on account of his being Susan’s husband.

And Susan is very happy.  Besides the pleasure of loving and being loved, she is in her place in creation.  The class of women (a very large one) to which she belongs comes into the world to make others happy.  Susan is skillful at this and very successful.  She makes everybody happy round her, “and that is so pleasant.”  She makes the man she loves happy, and that is delightful.