At first, when he used to tell her that he was going alone into Oxford to have a drink and a chat in the public room at one of the hotels, she would burst into tears, or take offence less liquid but more devastating. Later she accused him of an intrigue with a barmaid, and went into tantrums when in desperation he replied: “No such luck.” For the sake of peace he found it necessary at last to give up all such excursions except when they were unavoidable, and gradually his life had become that of a prisoner.

She carried this assertion of her wifely rights to galling and intolerable lengths. She would look over his shoulder when he was writing letters, and would be offended if he did not let her do so, or if he withheld the letters he received. On two or three occasions she had come to him, smiling innocently, and had handed him some opened envelope, and had said: “I’m so sorry, dear; I opened this by mistake. I thought it was for me.”

He could keep nothing from her prying eyes; and yet, in contrast to this curiosity, she showed no interest whatsoever in his life previous to his marriage, a fact which indicated clearly enough that her concern was solely in regard to her relationship with him, and was not prompted by any desire to enter into his personality. At first he had wanted to tell her of his early wanderings; but she had been bored, or even shocked, by his narrations, and had told him that his adventures did not sound very “nice.” Thus, though now she watched his every movement, she had no idea of his early travels, nor knew, except vaguely, what lands he had dwelt in, nor was she aware that in those days he had passed under the name of Easton.

Now Jim enjoyed telling a story: he was, in fact, a very interesting and vivacious raconteur; and he felt, at first, sad disappointment that his roaming life should be regarded as a subject too dull or too unrespectable for narration. “It’s a funny thing,” he once said to himself, “but that girl, Monimé, at Alexandria knows far more about me than my own wife, and I only knew her for a few hours!”

And then her poses and affectations! He discovered early in their married life that her offers to teach the cook her business, or to knit him waistcoats, were entirely fraudulent. She had none of the domestic virtues—a fact which only troubled him because she persisted in seeing herself in the rôle of practical housewife: he had no wish for her to be a cook or a sewing woman. She went through a phase in which she pictured herself as a sun-bonneted poultry-farmer. She bought a number of Rhode Island Reds and Buff Orpingtons; she caused elaborate hen-houses to be set up; and she subscribed to various poultry fanciers’ journals. But it was not many weeks before the pens were derelict and their occupants gone. For some months she played the part of the Lady Bountiful to the village, and might have been seen tripping down the lanes to visit the aged cottagers, a basket on her arm. This occupation, however, soon began to pall, and her apostacy was marked by a gradual abandonment of the job to the servants. Later she had attached herself to the High Church party in Oxford, and had added new horrors to the state of wedlock by regarding it as a mystic sacrament....

The most recent of her phases had followed on from this. She had asked Jim to allow her to bring to the house the orphaned children of a distant relative of her mother’s: two little girls, aged four and five. “It will be so sweet,” she had said, “to hear their merry laughter echoing about this old house. It will be some compensation for my great sorrow in not being allowed to have babies of my own.”

Jim had readily consented, for he was very fond of children; and soon the mites had arrived, very shy and tearful at first, but presently well content with their lot. Dolly declared that no nurse would be necessary, as she would delight in attending to them herself, and for two weeks she had played the little mother with diminishing enthusiasm. But the day speedily came when help was found to be necessary, and now a good-natured nursery-governess was installed at the manor.

Having thus regained her leisure, she bought a notebook, and labelling it “The Tiny Tot’s Treasury,” spent several mornings in dividing the pages into sections under elaborate headings written in a large round hand. Jim chanced upon this book one day—it lay open upon a table—and two section-headings caught his eye. They read:—

Hands, games withToes, games with
“Can you keep a secret?”“This little pig went to market.”
“Pat-a-cake.”

The book was abandoned within a week or two; but the recollection of its futility, its pose, remained in Jim’s memory for many a day.