"This is the worst calf's head soup you ever made. What have you done to it?" said Mr. Bain, pushing the plate of soup from before him, with an expression of disgust on his face.
There were tears in the eyes of the suffering wife, and she lifted them to her husband's countenance. Steadily she looked at him for a few moments; then her lips quivered, and the tears fell over her cheeks. Hastily rising, she left the dining room.
"It is rather hard that I can't speak without having a scene," muttered Mr. Bain, as he tried his soup once more. It did not suit his taste at all; so he pushed it from him, and made his dinner of something else.
As his wife had been pleased to go off up-stairs in a huff, just at a word, Mr. Bain did not feel inclined to humour her. So, after finishing his dinner, he took his hat and left the house, without so much as seeking to offer a soothing word.
Does the reader wonder that, when Mr. Bain returned in the evening, he found his wife so seriously ill as to make it necessary to send for their family physician? No, the reader will not wonder at this.
But Mr. Bain felt a little surprised. He had not anticipated any thing of the kind.
Mrs. Bain was not only ill, but delirious. Her feeble frame, exhausted by maternal duties, and ever-beginning, never-ending household cares, had yielded under the accumulation of burdens too heavy to bear.
For a while after Mr. Bain's return, his wife talked much, but incoherently; then she became quiet. But her fever remained high, and inflammation tended strongly towards the brain. He was sitting by the bedside about ten o'clock, alone with her, when she began to talk in her wandering way again; but her words were distinct and coherent.
"I tried to do it right," said she, sadly; "but my head ached so that I did not know what I was doing. Ah me! I never please him now in any thing. I wish I could always look pleasant—cheerful. But I can't. Well! well! it won't last for ever. I never feel well—never—never—never! And I'm so faint and weak in the morning! But he has no patience with me. He doesn't know what it is to feel sick. Ah me!"
And her voice sighed itself away into silence.