One warm evening, Letty was standing at the gate, looking for her husband, who was a little later than usual. The short baby, looking shorter still in his abbreviated petticoats, was rolling on the grass. Ginger, now grown a magnificent cat, was prancing around him, keeping a sharp look-out for a fresh grasshopper. Letty turned from her watch for a moment, and looked around her.
"How lovely every thing is!" said she to herself. "How much we have to be thankful for! We have had nothing but mercies from the beginning till now. May God make us grateful!"
She turned again to the gate, and saw John coming slowly up the street.
The moment he came in sight, she perceived that something was the matter. Still, she was not alarmed. John was constitutionally subject to fits of gloom and depression which almost amounted to hypochondria; and while they lasted, he was totally unable to take a cheerful view of any thing.
Letty used to be very much distressed by these fits at first; but she learned, after a while, how to treat them, and even, to some extent, to guard against them, by inducing her husband to take certain precautions in regard to diet and repose, which, left to himself, he was too apt to neglect.
"John has got one of his blue fits," said she to herself. "I thought he was working too hard."
Not to seem as though she were watching him, she took up Alick and went into the house to have tea all ready.
John did not enter at once; and, looking out to see what had become of him, she saw him leaning over the well, breaking bits off a certain choice shrub, a present from Mr. De Witt, which grew close by.
"Why, John, what are you doing?" she exclaimed. "You are spoiling that beautiful rose-acacia."
"Am I?" said John, rousing himself, and looking around. "Well, Letty, I beg your pardon. I did not know what I was about; and that is the truth."