“I know what you mean, Ralph,” said she, nervously playing with her watchguard and tracing the figure on the rug with the point of her tiny foot—“I know what you mean: but I thought you always liked to be yielded to, and I can’t alter now.”
“I do like it,” replied he, bringing her to him by another tug at her hair. “You mustn’t mind my talk, Milly. A man must have something to grumble about; and if he can’t complain that his wife harries him to death with her perversity and ill-humour, he must complain that she wears him out with her kindness and gentleness.”
“But why complain at all, unless because you are tired and dissatisfied?”
“To excuse my own failings, to be sure. Do you think I’ll bear all the burden of my sins on my own shoulders, as long as there’s another ready to help me, with none of her own to carry?”
“There is no such one on earth,” said she seriously; and then, taking his hand from her head, she kissed it with an air of genuine devotion, and tripped away to the door.
“What now?” said he. “Where are you going?”
“To tidy my hair,” she answered, smiling through her disordered locks; “you’ve made it all come down.”
“Off with you then!—An excellent little woman,” he remarked when she was gone, “but a thought too soft—she almost melts in one’s hands. I positively think I ill-use her sometimes, when I’ve taken too much—but I can’t help it, for she never complains, either at the time or after. I suppose she doesn’t mind it.”
“I can enlighten you on that subject, Mr. Hattersley,” said I: “she does mind it; and some other things she minds still more, which yet you may never hear her complain of.”
“How do you know?—does she complain to you?” demanded he, with a sudden spark of fury ready to burst into a flame if I should answer ‘yes.’