“I ask your pardon, madam; but I didn’t say Miss.  I am not quite so ignorant as all that comes to.”

“Oh, yes, Mr. Smith, but you did say it,” I replied, quite astonished at this unexpected denial.

“Excuse me for saying that you are in error,” he returned, drawing himself up.  “I never say Miss for Mrs.”

“Why, Mr. Smith!  You always say it.  I have noticed it a hundred times.  I believe I can hear pretty correctly.”

“In this instance you certainly have not.”

Mr. Smith was growing warm, and I felt the blood rushing to my face.  A rather tart reply was on my lips, but I bit them hard and succeeded in keeping them closed.

A deep silence followed.  In a little while Mr. Smith took up a newspaper and commenced reading, and I found some relief for a heavy pressure that was upon my bosom, in the employment of hem-stitching a fine pocket-handkerchief.

And this was the return I had met for a kind attempt to correct a mistake of my husband’s, that made him liable to ridicule on the charge of vulgarity!  And to deny, too, that he said “Miss,” when I had been worried about it for more than a year!  It was too bad!

After this Mr. Smith was very particular in saying, when he spoke of a married woman to me, Misses.  The emphasis on the second syllable was much too strongly marked to be pleasant on my ears.  I was terribly afraid he would say “Mistress,” thus going off into the opposite extreme of vulgarity.

This first attempt to put my husband straight had certainly not been a very pleasant one.  He had shown, unexpectedly to me, a humour that could by no means be called amiable; and by which I was both grieved, and astonished.  I made up my mind that I would be very careful in future how I tried my hand at reforming him.  But his oft-repeated “he shew it to me,” and “obleeged,” soon fretted me so sorely, that I was forced to come down upon him again, which I did at a time when I felt more than usually annoyed.  I cannot remember now precisely what I said to him, but I know that I put him into an ill-humour, and that it was cloudy weather in the house for a week, although the sun shone brightly enough out of doors. “He shew it to me,” and “obleeged” were, however, among the things that had been, after that.  So .much was gained; although there were times when I half suspected that I had lost more than I had gained.  But I persevered, and, every now and then, when I got “worked up” about something, administered the rod of correction.

Gradually I could see that my husband was changing, and, as I felt, for the worse.  Scarcely a year had passed before he would get into a pet if I said the least word to him.  He couldn’t bear any thing from me.  This seemed very unreasonable, and caused me not only to sigh, but to shed many a tear over his perverseness.  From the thoughtful, ever considerate, self-sacrificing lover, he had come