"There are plenty of books."
"Books! I never read books; I can't get interested in them. They are too long; it would take me a week to get through even a moderate-sized book. I would rather go back to the shop again. I understand making a hat, but as to books, I never did fancy them much."
Parker lounged for a couple of hours in the shop of his friend, and then turned his face homeward, feeling very uncomfortable.
The dark day was sinking into darker night when he entered his house. There was no light in the passage nor any in the parlour. As he groped his way in, he struck against a chair that was out of place, and hurt himself. The momentary pain caused the fretfulness he felt, on finding all dark within, to rise into anger. He went back to the kitchen, grumbling sadly, and there gave the cook a sound rating for not having lit the lamps earlier. Mrs. Parker heard all, but said nothing. The cook brought a lamp into the parlour and placed it upon the table with an indignant air; she then flirted off up-stairs, and complained to Mrs. Parker that she had never been treated so badly in her life by any person, and notified her that she should leave the moment her week was up; that, anyhow, she had nothing to do with the lamps—lighting them was the chambermaid's work.
It so happened that Mrs. Parker had sent the chambermaid out, and this the cook knew very well; but cook was in a bad humour about something, and didn't choose to do any thing not in the original contract. She was a good domestic, and had lived with Mrs. Parker for some years. She had her humours, as every one has, but these had always been borne with by her mistress. Too many fretting incidents had just occurred, however, and Mrs. Parker's mind was not so evenly balanced as usual. Nancy's words and manner provoked her too far, and she replied, "Very well; go in welcome."
Here was a state of affairs tending in no degree to increase the happiness of the retired tradesman. His wife met him at the supper-table with knit brows and tightly compressed lips. Not a word passed during the meal.
After supper, Mr. Parker looked around him for some means of passing the time. The newspapers were read through; it still rained heavily without; he could not ask his wife to play a game at backgammon.
"Oh dear!" he sighed, reclining back upon the sofa, and there he lay for half an hour, feeling as he had never felt in his life. At nine o'clock he went to bed, and remained awake for half the night.
Much to his satisfaction, when he opened his eyes on the next morning, the sun was shining into his window brightly. He would not be confined to the house so closely for another day.
A few weeks sufficed to exhaust all of Mr. Parker's time-killing resources. The newspapers, he complained, did not contain any thing of interest now. Having retired on his money, and set up for something of a gentleman, he, after a little while, gave up visiting at the shops of his old fellow-tradesmen. He did not like to be seen on terms of intimacy with working people! Street-walking did very well at first, but he tired of that; it was going over and over the same ground. He would have ridden out and seen the country, but he had never been twice on horseback in his life, and felt rather afraid of his neck. In fact, nothing was left to him, but to lounge about the house the greater portion of his time, and grumble at every thing; this only made matters worse, for Mrs. Parker would not submit to grumbling without a few words back that cut like razors.