And it was my last.

When next I met Mrs. Williams and Mrs. Glenn, there was, in both of them, a reserve not seen before.  I felt this change keenly.  I had wronged myself in their good opinion; and could not venture upon an explanation of my conduct; for that, I felt, might only make matters worse.

How often, since, has my cheek burned, as a vivid recollection came up before my mind of what occurred on that morning!  I can never forget it.

CHAPTER X.

Shirt buttons.

In a previous chapter, I gave the reader one of the Experiences of my sister’s husband, Mr. John Jones.  I now give another.

There was a time in my married life, (thus Mr. Jones writes, in one of his “Confessions,”) when I was less annoyed if my bosom or wristband happened to be minus a button, than I am at present.  But continual dropping will wear away a stone, and the ever recurring buttonless collar or wristband will wear out a man’s patience, be he naturally as enduring as the Man Of Uz.

I don’t mean by this, that Mrs. Jones is a neglectful woman.  Oh, no! don’t let that be imagined for a moment.  Mrs. Jones is a woman who has an eye for shirt buttons, and when that is said, a volume is told in a few words.

But I don’t care how careful a wife is, nor how good an eye she may have for shirt buttons, there will come a time, when, from some cause or other, she will momentarily abate her vigilance, and that will be the very time when Betty’s washing-board, or Nancy’s sad-iron, has been at work upon the buttons.

For a year or two after our marriage, I used to express impatience, whenever, in putting on a clean shirt, I found a button gone.  Mrs. Jones, bore this for a while without exhibiting much feeling.  But it fretted her more than she permitted any one to see.  At length, the constant recurrence of the evil—­I didn’t know as much then as I do now—­annoyed me so that I passed from ejaculatory expressions of impatience into more decided and emphatic disapprobation, and to

“Psha!” and “there it is again!” and the like were added: 

“I declare, Mrs. Jones, this is too bad!” or

“I’ve given up hoping for a shirt with a full complement of buttons—­” or

“If you can’t sew the buttons on my shirt, Mrs. Jones, I will hire some one to do it.”

This last expression of displeasure I never ventured upon but once.  I have always felt ashamed of it since, whenever a recollection of my unreasonableness and impatience in the early times of the shirt button trouble has crossed my mind.  My wife took it so much to heart, and so earnestly avowed her constant solicitude in regard to the shirt buttons, that I resolved from that time, to bear the evil like a man, and instead of grumbling or complaining, make known the fact of a deficiency whenever it occurred, as a good joke.  And so for a year or so it used to be when the buttons were missing: