"Did you obey your husband?"
Elsie looked surprise, almost startled; the query seemed to throw new light on the state of affairs between Edward and his young wife; but she answered promptly in her own sweet, gentle tones. "My dear, I often wished he would only give me the opportunity; it would have been so great a pleasure to give up my wishes for one I loved so dearly."
"Then he never ordered you?"
"Yes, once—very soon after our marriage—he laid his commands upon me to cease calling him Mr. Travilla and say Edward," Elsie said, with a dreamy smile and a far-away look in her soft brown eyes.
"He was very much older than I, and knowing him from very early childhood, as a grown-up gentleman and my father's friend, I had been used to calling him Mr. Travilla, and could hardly feel it respectful to drop the title.
"The only other order he ever gave me was not to exert myself to lift my little Elsie before I had recovered my strength after her birth. He was very tenderly careful of his little wife, as he delighted to call her."
"I wish I had known him," said Zoe. "Is my husband much like him?"
"More in looks than disposition. I sometimes think he resembles my father more than his own in the latter regard.
"Yes," thought Zoe, "that's where he gets his disposition to domineer over me and order me about. I always knew Grandpa Dinsmore was of that sort."
Aloud she said, with a watery smile, "And my Edward has been very tenderly careful of me."