One evening, it was just five weeks after the marriage, and when they were snugly settled in their own house, Frederick Lee was seated before the grate, in a handsome rocking-chair, his body in a position that it would have required a stretch of language to pronounce graceful or becoming.  He had drawn off one of his boots, that was lying on the floor, and the leg from which it had been taken was hanging over an arm of his chair.  He had slipped forward in the chair—­his ordinary mode of sitting, or, rather, lying—­so far that his head, which, if he had been upright, would have been even with the top of the back, was at least twelve inches below it.  To add to the effect of his position, he was swinging the bootless leg that hung across the arm of the chair with a rapid, circling motion.  He had been reclining in this inelegant attitude for about ten minutes, when Kate, who had permitted herself to become a good deal annoyed by it, said to him, rather earnestly—­

“Do, Frederick, sit up straight, and try and be a little more graceful in your positions.”

“What’s that?” inquired the young man, as if he had not heard distinctly.

“Can’t you sit up straight?”

Kate smiled; but Lee saw that it was a forced smile.

“Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently.  “I can sit up straight as an arrow, but I find this attitude most agreeable.”

“If you knew how you looked,” said Kate.

“How do I look?” asked the young man, playfully.

“Oh! you look—­you look more like a country clod-hopper than any thing else.”

There was a sharpness in Kate’s tones that fell unpleasantly on the ears of the young man.

“Do I, indeed!” was his rather cold remark.  Yet he did not change his position.

“Indeed, you do,” said the wife, who was, by this time, beginning to feel a good deal of irritation; for she saw that Frederick was not inclined to respond in the way she had hoped, to her very reasonable desire that he would assume a more graceful attitude.  “The fact is,” she continued, impelled to further utterance by the excited state of her feelings, although she was conscious of having already said more than was agreeable to her husband, “you ought to correct yourself of these ungraceful and undignified habits.  It shows a want of”—­

Kate stopped suddenly.  She felt that she was about using words that would inevitably give offence.

“A want of what?” inquired Lee, in a low, firm voice, while he continued to look his young wife steadily in the face.

Kate’s eyes fell to the floor and she remained silent.

“Ungraceful and undignified.  Humph!”

Lee was evidently hurt at this allegation, as the tone in which he repeated the words clearly showed.

“Do you call your present attitude graceful?” Kate asked, rallying herself under the reflection that she was right.

“It is comfortable for me; and, therefore, ought to be graceful in your eyes,” was the young man’s perverse answer.  Not the slightest change had yet taken place in his position.