“Evidently, she is determined that this thing shall not go on,” said John. “Well, I shall never try again; it’s of no use;” and John went up to his sister’s, and threw himself down upon the old chintz sofa as if it had been his mother’s bosom. His sister sat there, sewing. The sun came twinkling through a rustic frame-work of ivy which it had been the pride of her heart to arrange the week before. All the old family pictures and heirlooms, and sketches and pencillings, were arranged in the most charming way, so that her rooms seemed a reproduction of the old home.
“Hang it all!” said John, with a great flounce as he turned over on the sofa. “I’m not up to par this morning.”
Now, Grace had that perfect intuitive knowledge of just what the matter was with her brother, that women always have who have grown up in intimacy with a man. These fine female eyes see farther between the rough cracks and ridges of the oak bark of manhood than men themselves. Nothing would have been easier, had Grace been a jealous exigeante woman, than to have passed a fine probe of sisterly inquiry into the weak places where the ties between John and Lillie were growing slack, and untied and loosened them more and more. She could have done it so tenderly, so conscientiously, so pityingly,—encouraging John to talk and to complain, and taking part with him,—till there should come to be two parties in the family, the brother and sister against the wife.
How strong the temptation was, those may feel who reflect that this one subject caused an almost total eclipse of the life-long habit of confidence which had existed between Grace and her brother, and that her brother was her life and her world.
But Grace was one of those women formed under the kindly severe discipline of Puritan New England, to act not from blind impulse or instinct, but from high principle. The habit of self-examination and self-inspection, for which the religious teaching of New England has been peculiar, produced a race of women who rose superior to those mere feminine caprices and impulses which often hurry very generous and kindly-natured persons into ungenerous and dishonorable conduct. Grace had been trained, by a father and mother whose marriage union was an ideal of mutual love, honor, and respect, to feel that marriage was the holiest and most awful of obligations. To her, the idea of a husband or a wife betraying each other’s weaknesses or faults by complaints to a third party seemed something sacrilegious; and she used all her womanly tact and skill to prevent any conversation that might lead to such a result.
“Lillie is entirely knocked up by the affair yesterday; she had a terrible headache this morning,” said John.
“Poor child! She is a delicate little thing,” said Grace.
“She couldn’t have had any labor,” continued John, “for I saw to every thing and provided every thing myself; and Bridget and Rosa and all the girls entered into it with real spirit, and Lillie did the best she could, poor girl! but I could see all the time she was worrying about her new fizgigs and folderols in the house. Hang it! I wish they were all in the Red Sea!” burst out John, glad to find something to vent himself upon. “If I had known that making the house over was going to be such a restraint on a fellow, I would never have done it.”
“Oh, well! never mind that now,” said Grace. “Your house will get rubbed down by and by, and the new gloss taken off; and so will your wife, and you will all be cosey and easy as an old shoe. Young mistresses, you see, have nerves all over their house at first. They tremble at every dent in their furniture, and wink when you come near it, as if you were going to hit it a blow; but that wears off in time, and they they learn to take it easy.”