When Mrs. Graham felt uncomfortable, she liked to make others so, too, and to her friend’s question she answered, “I may as well be plain as not, and to tell you the truth, I should enjoy visiting you very much, were it not for one thing. That mother of yours——”
“Of my husband’s,” interrupted Mrs. Livingstone and Mrs. Graham continued just where she left off.
“Annoys me exceedingly, by eternally tracing in me a resemblance to some down-east creature or other—what is her name—Sco—Sco—Scovandyke; yes, that’s it—Scovandyke. Of course it’s not pleasant for me to be told every time I meet your mother——”
“Mr. Livingstone’s mother,” again interrupted the lady.
“That I look like some of her acquaintances, for I contend that families of high birth bear with them marks which cannot be mistaken.”
“Certainly, certainly,” said Mrs. Livingstone, adding, that “she was herself continually annoyed by Mrs. Nichols’s vulgarity, but her husband insisted that she should come to the table, so what could she do?”
And mutually troubled, the one about her husband, and the other about her husband’s mother, the two amiable ladies parted.
Scarcely was Mrs. Livingstone gone when Mr. Graham entered the room, finding his wife, who had heard his footsteps, in violent hysterics. He had seen her so too often to be alarmed, and was about to pull the bellrope, when she found voice to bid him desist, saying it was himself who was killing her by inches, and that the sooner she was dead, the better she supposed he would like it. “But, for my sake,” she added, in a kind of howl, between crying and scolding, “do try to behave yourself during the short time I have to live, and not go to giving away ponies, and mercy knows what.”
Now, Mr. Graham was not conscious of having looked at a lady, except through the window, for many days, and when his wife first attacked him, he was at a great loss to understand; but as she proceeded it all became plain, and on the whole, he felt glad that the worst was over. He would not acknowledge, even to himself, that he was afraid of his wife, still he had a little rather she would not always know what he did. He supposed, as a matter of course, that she would, earlier or later, hear of his present to ’Lena, and he well knew that such an event would surely be followed by a storm, but after what had taken place between them that morning, he did not expect so much feeling, for he had thought her wrath nearly expended. But Mrs. Graham was capable of great things—as she proved on this occasion, taunting her husband with his preference for ’Lena, accusing him of loving her better than he did herself, and asking him plainly, if it were not so.
“Say,” she continued, stamping her foot (the one without a slipper), “say—I will be answered. Don’t you like ’Lena better than you do me?”