"I don't see how she could help it," Algy said, his face crumpling with tears. "Well, she was a good girl. And she was a good wife, sir, too. I tell you, you never saw a better wife. I used to come home tired, and there'd be my slippers out for me. Yes, sir; she never missed it. And she was always pleasant, too; you mayn't call just being pleasant, religion, but I—"
"I do," Dr. Lavendar interposed.
"Well, so do I," Algy said, his face lightening a little. "I call it a better religion than her folks showed. Well, now, sir, I loved Mary"—he stopped and cried, openly—"I loved her (I didn't need that hell-hound of a brother to come after me)—yes, I was just as fond of her; and yet there was times when I come home at night—not—not quite—well, maybe a little—you know?"
"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.
"But, my God, sir, Mary was pleasant. It isn't every woman that would be pleasant then, is it?"
"No, it isn't, Algy."
"Course, next day she'd tell me I done wrong. (She never told me so at the time—Mary had sense.) And I always said: 'Well, yes, Mary, that's so. And I'll never do it again.' But she was pleasant. Course I don't mean she was lively. She used to remember—well, that we'd made a mistake. You know? And she used to kind a brood on it. She talked to you considerably about it, I guess. She said you comforted her. She said you said that maybe her—her mistake had brought her to be kind o' more religious—saved her, as you might say."
"I said that she had come to know her Saviour through His forgiveness."
"I don't think Mary needed any forgiveness," the poor husband said, with tearful resentment; "I think her folks needed it."
"I'm sorry for them," Dr. Lavendar said. "They have got to remember that they might have been kinder. That's a hard thing to have to remember."