Mr. Bain had, as we have said, an excellent appetite; and he took especial pleasure in its gratification.  He liked his dinner particularly, and his dinners were always good dinners.  He went to market himself.  On his way to his store he passed through the market, and his butcher sent home what he purchased.

“The marketing has come home,” said the cook to Mrs. Bain, about ten o’clock, arousing her from a brief slumber into which she had fallen—­a slumber that exhausted nature demanded, and which would have done far more than medicine for the restoration of something like a healthy tone to her system.

“Very well.  I will come down in a little while,” returned Mrs. Bain, raising herself on her elbow, and see about dinner.  What has Mr. Bain sent home?”

“A calf’s head.”

“What!”

“A calf’s head.”

“Very well.  I will be down to see about it.”  Mrs. Bain repressed any further remark.

Sick and exhausted as she felt, she must spend at least two hours in the kitchen in making soup and dressing the calf’s head for her husband’s dinner.  Nothing of this could be trusted to the cook, for to trust any part of its preparation to her was to have it spoiled.

With a sigh, Mrs. Bain arose from the bed.  At first she staggered across the room like one intoxicated, and the pain, which had subsided during her brief slumber, returned again with added violence.  But, really sick as she felt, she went down to the kitchen and passed full two hours there in the preparation of delicacies for her husband’s dinner.  And what was her reward?

“This is the worst calf’s head soup you ever made.  What have you done to it?” said Mr. Bain, pushing the plate of soup from before him, with an expression of disgust on his face.

There were tears in the eyes of the suffering wife, and she lifted them to her husband’s countenance.  Steadily she looked at him for a few moments; then her lips quivered, and the tears fell over her cheeks.  Hastily rising, she left the dining room.

“It is rather hard that I can’t speak without having a scene,” muttered Mr. Bain, as he tried his soup once more.  It did not suit his taste at all; so he pushed it from him, and made his dinner of something else.

As his wife had been pleased to go off up-stairs in a huff, just at a word, Mr. Bain did not feel inclined to humour her.  So, after finishing his dinner, he took his hat and left the house, without so much as seeking to offer a soothing word.

Does the reader wonder that, when Mr. Bain returned in the evening, he found his wife so seriously ill as to make it necessary to send for their family physician?  No, the reader will not wonder at this.

But Mr. Bain felt a little surprised.  He had not anticipated any thing of the kind.

Mrs. Bain was not only ill, but delirious.  Her feeble frame, exhausted by maternal duties, and ever-beginning, never-ending household cares, had yielded under the accumulation of burdens too heavy to bear.