“And which is that, dearest?”
“The home end. Let your first and best energies be spent on the home; it will surely be happier for us both. And let the care of your own health, in the way of taking proper exercise, be reckoned as a most important part of home duties. Life is given us to use, and not to shorten. Therefore, don’t undertake anything which will unfit you for the due performance of these home duties. You have no just call to any such undertaking. Do that which is the manifest work lying at your hand, and I feel sure you will be guided aright as to what other work you can find time and strength for.”
“Well, John, I will think it well over; I am glad we have had this conversation.”
“So am I, my precious wife; I am sure good will come of it. And you know we have an invitation to visit the Maltbys in the spring: we shall be sure to get some words of valuable counsel there. I don’t want to hinder you from doing good out of your own home; I don’t want selfishly to claim all your energies for home work, and my own convenience and comfort: but I do feel strongly, and more and more strongly every day, that there is a tendency at the present day to make an idol of woman’s work; to keep, too, the bow perpetually on the stretch; to drag wives, mothers, and daughters from their home duties into public, and to give them no rest, but bid them strain every nerve, and gallop, gallop till they die.”
“Perhaps so, John; but it is time for me to go up and dress for dinner.”
Chapter Four.
Tommy Tracks.
No one was more universally respected or more vigorously abused in Crossbourne than “Tommy Tracks,” as he was sneeringly called. His real name was Thomas Bradly. He was not a native of Crossbourne, but had resided in that town for some five years past at the time when our story opens. As he was a capital workman, and had two sons growing up into young men who were also very skilful hands, it was thought quite natural that he should have come to settle down in Crossbourne, where skilled labour was well remunerated. As to where he came from, some said one thing, some another. He was very reserved on the matter himself, and so people soon ceased to ask him about it.