At first James Cheshire replied with a careless waggery, “The pretty face makes capital butter, though, eh? The dressed doll turns out a tolerable dairy, eh? Better,” added James, “than a good many can, that I know, who have neither pretty faces, nor have much taste in dressing to crack of.”
The allusion to Nancy’s dwarfish plainness was what peculiarly provoked James Cheshire. He might have laughed at the criticisms on his wife, though the envious neighbors’ wives did say that it was the old servant and not Mrs. Cheshire who produced such fine butter and cheese; for where-ever she appeared, spite of envy and detraction, her lovely person and quiet good sense, and the growing rumor of her good management, did not fail to produce a due impression. And James had prepared to laugh it off; but it would not do. He found himself getting every now and then angry and unsettled by it. A coarse jest on Nancy at any time threw him into a desperate fit of indignation. The more the superior merit of his wife was known, the more seemed to increase the envy and venom of some of his relatives. He saw, too, that it had an effect on his wife. She was often sad, and sometimes in tears.
One day when this occurred, James Cheshire said, as they sat at tea, “I’ve made up my mind. Peace in this life is a jewel. Better is a dinner of herbs with peace, than a stalled ox with strife. Well, now, I’m determined to have peace. Peace and luv,” said he, looking affectionately at his wife and Nancy, “peace and luv, by God’s blessing, have settled down on this house; but there are stings here and stings there, when we go out of doors. We must not only have peace and luv in the house, but peace all round it. So I’ve made up my mind. I’m for America!”
“For America!” exclaimed Jane. “Surely you cannot be in earnest.”
“I never was more in earnest in my life,” said James Cheshire. “It is true I do very well on this farm here, though it’s a cowdish situation; but from all I can learn, I can do much better in America. I can there farm a much better farm of my own. We can have a much finer climate than this Peak country, and our countrymen still about us. Now, I want to know what makes a man’s native land pleasant to him?—the kindness of his relations and friends. But then, if a man’s relations are not kind?—if they get a conceit into them, that because they are relations they are to choose a man’s wife for him, and sting him and snort at him because he has a will of his own?—why, then I say, God send a good big herring-pool between me and such relations! My relations, by way of showing their natural affection, spit spite and bitterness. You, dear wife and sister, have none of yourn to spite you. In the house we have peace and luv. Let us take the peace and luv, and leave the bitterness behind.”
There was a deep silence.
“It is a serious proposal,” at length said Jane, with tears in her eyes.
“What says Nancy?” asked James.
“It is a serious proposal,” said Nancy, “but it is good. I feel it so.”
There was another deep silence; and James Cheshire said, “Then it is decided.”