You can guess what a nice sort of woman she was; perhaps being over forty when she married had something to do with it.
Poor Mr. Croker was a very mild little man who daren’t say his soul was his own, and he obeyed like a lamb, and was very kind to her with it all, and I dare say loved her very much—for I’ve heard, and I dare say it’s true, that men do love women like that sometimes much better than women who let themselves be trodden on.
On Sunday Mr. Croker had to work harder than ever, because his wife went to church in the morning, and left him at home to do the cooking and get the dinner ready, and when she came home she sat down and let him dish it up, and a nice to-do there was if everything wasn’t quite right.
On Sunday afternoon she used to have a nap, and to keep Croker out of mischief she used to give him the Sunday-school books that she had had when a little girl to read, and, to make sure he didn’t go to sleep or get lazy, she used to make him learn the collect for the day and a hymn while she was asleep, and he had to say them when she woke up.
It seems hardly possible that a man would lead such a life, but poor Croker did, and I know that it is true, for I can judge by her goings-on now, when I see her very often; and all the people who knew about her married life tell the same story, and poor Croker’s “mates” in his workshop told what they had heard from him when he died, and there was an inquest on him.
But I must not anticipate.
To show how she treated her husband, it was a fact—and she confessed it herself—that she didn’t even let him have what she had in the way of crockery. She had nicer things, china and that sort of thing, which she used for herself, but poor Croker had his tea in a big yellow mug, and had a common cracked old plate to have his dinner on, and had his beer in the same old yellow mug, while she had hers in a glass; and even the beer was different, he having to fetch her a pint of the best, while he was only allowed half a pint of the common.
It was one Sunday afternoon that Mr. Croker came to his end, and it was really through his being so afraid of his wife.
It seems she never allowed him to smoke, because she said it was a wasteful habit; but he used to keep a pipe at the shop, and smoke it secretly till he got near his home, and then call at a friend’s house and leave it for fear she should search his pockets and find it on him.
He had some way of not smelling of tobacco by having a chronic cough, which made him always take a coughdrop that hid the smell of tobacco; and that was enough, because I shouldn’t suppose that Mrs. Croker ever so far unbent her dignity as to kiss the poor man.