Bill had "a little wee face, with a little yellow beard, a Cain-coloured beard," and usually wore a deprecatory smile upon his countenance. He was possessed of a perfect temper, and whatever his lot might seem to others, to himself it was all that could be desired. To be the husband of such a woman, could man desire a better fate? And, indeed, Kate Aikins was a fine-looking woman, tall and straight. Old Sam Symmons often said she was a "gallant figure of a woman."
As they passed the house they heard Kate's voice sounding shrilly from within:
"He did what! Weighed the paper with the cheese? And you stood by and never said a word? I'll be bound! Well, 'a fool and his money is soon parted.' There's truth in them old sayings yet. The idea of you being scared to speak to Hi. Green and him cheating you before your very face! Land sakes! What's he I wonder? Next time you go to buy cheese you take paper with you. He asks enough for the cheese without paying for paper."
As they got beyond hearing, Judith's face burned out of sympathy for Bill's embarrassment. However, Bill was in nowise troubled. He knew his wife would be quite as ready to express herself towards any one else in the village as to himself, and a philosophy born of that reflection entirely prevented Bill from feeling in any degree abashed by strangers enjoying his wife's eloquence.
It was only two days since she had announced to him with much satisfaction that she had "just told Sarah Myers what she thought of her," and she had expressed a longing desire of late to have a five minutes' talk with Andrew Cutler, relative to some supposed slight he had put upon her. The whole village was well aware of many instances of Bill's discomfiture when Kate first married him and undertook his reformation.
There was the day when Bill, well on towards being thoroughly drunk, was returning home down the village street, walking carelessly through the deep slush of early spring. Kate met him. She, if truth be told, was on the lookout for him, having despatched him more than two hours before to get some starch from the store.
Between waiting for the starch and waiting for Bill, Kate was wroth when she opened the door to begin her search. By an unlucky chance, her first step took her over the ankles in icy slush, which, strange to say, instead of cooling her wrath, raised it to white heat. Therefore, when she, carefully picking her way up one side of the street, beheld Bill advancing down the other, regardless of mud and slush, she paused in disgust, until he was nearly opposite to her, and then ejaculated in a tone of deepest disbelief in her own vision—"Bill! is that you?"
"No," promptly replied Bill, "nor nobody like me either;" with which the valiant Bill had resumed his way, feeling proud that he had not only dismissed certainty but even suspicion of his identity from Kate's mind.
Before long he was a sadder and for the nonce, a wiser man, for Kate reached home as soon as he did, and thereupon gave him to understand in a very unmistakable way that he was her property and she knew it.
All Ovid remembered this, and indeed could not well forget it, for every wash-day, when starch naturally cropped up as one of the circumstances attendant upon the event of washing, Kate might have been heard by any passer-by giving Bill a full and dramatic account of the occurrence, with preface upon drunkenness in general, and appendix upon Bill's phases of the vice in particular, and copious addenda, of contempt, contumely and vituperation. Bill listened, marvelling and admiring, for her flow of language was a great source of pride to Bill, albeit directed at himself.