"Is it possible," indignantly continued Mrs. Nuttall, "that any man can be so unmanly? Nicholas! Do you hear me?"
"Don't bother! Let me go to sleep!"
"Perhaps it's the new servant I took this morning. I shouldn't wonder if Australian servants walked in their sleep."
"If I thought so," murmured Nicholas, "I would go and admonish her. She's a very pretty girl."
Wifely indignation kept Mrs. Nuttall silent for awhile, but she soon commenced the nagging system again, and so worried her husband that, in an agony of desperation, he sprang up like a Jack-in-a-box, and after driving his fist fiercely into his pillow half-a-dozen times, fell back exhausted.
"Very pretty!" exclaimed Mrs. Nuttall, sarcastically. "Very pretty, indeed! I wonder you don't beat me!"
"The man who raises his hand against a woman," said Mr. Nuttall, slumberously, "except in the way of kindness, is--is--I don't exactly remember what he is. There's a thing, Maria, I have thought of often, and have never spoken of to you. It isn't right--there should not be any secrets between man and wife."
"My very words, Nicholas, my dear! What is it you are going to say?"
"In the course of our confidential conversations--as we are having now, Maria"--(in her eagerness not to lose a word, Mrs. Nuttall placed her close to her husband's lips, for he spoke very drowsily, and appeared to be addressing his pillow)--"you have frequently mentioned your respected mamma. Did she know a lady of the name of Mrs. Caudle?"
"I am not aware that she knew any person with such a vulgar name."