At the dinner-table Ernest complimented me on my good housekeeping.
"I was proud of my little wife at lunch" he said.
"And yet you said that outrageous thing about my reading about nothing but murders!" I said.
"Oh, well, you understood it," he said, laughingly.
"But that dreadful Mrs. Winthrop took it literally."
"What do we care for Mrs. Winthrop?" he returned. "If you could have seen the contrast between you two in my eyes!"
After all, one must take life as it comes, its homely details are so mixed up with its sweet charities, and loves, and friendships that one is forced to believe that God has joined them together and does not will that they should be put asunder. It is something that my husband has been satisfied with his wife and his home to-day; that does me good.
MARCH 30.-A stormy day and the children home from school, and no little frolicking and laughing going on. It must, be delightful to feel well and strong while one's children are young, there is so much to do for them. I do it; but no one can tell the effort, it costs me. What a contrast there is between their vitality and the languor under which I suffer! When their noise became intolerable, I proposed to read to them; of course they made ten times as much clamor of pleasure and of course they leaned on me, ground their elbows into my lap, and tired me all out. As I sat with this precious little group about me, Ernest opened the door, looked in, gravely and without a word, and instantly disappeared. I felt uneasy and asked him, this evening, why he looked so. Was I indulging the children too much, or what was it? He took me into his arms and said:
"My precious wife, why will you torment yourself with such fancies? My very heart was yearning over you at that moment, as it did the first time I saw you surrounded by your little class at Sunday-school, years ago, and I was asking myself why God had given me such a wife, and my children such a mother."
Oh, I am glad I have got this written down! I will read it over when the sense of my deficiencies overwhelms me, while I ask God why He has given me such a patient, forbearing husband.