attentive to a man's comfort; and above all, when ill-humor allows itself the parting shot from the doorway of a muttered "darned fool."

Mrs. Meeks had watched her stout, well-set-up husband drive away behind his handsome bay horses to his office in town, and then fallen into an unpleasant fit of meditation over her morning task of putting the sitting-room in order.

The suggestion of Cupid's bow had entirely disappeared by the time she had mentally reviewed the whole situation, and her mouth was, as the old black servant secretly observed as she entered, "set for a fight."

"Ef ever Mis' Linda gits her back up onc't, that air Englishman better look out for hisse'f," old Rose had confided to a confidential friend. "I knows the Fitzhugh blood. It won't bear much puttin' upon, now I tells you."

The old family servant was not particularly fond of her Mis' Linda's husband, and she looked forward to that crisis when the Fitzhugh blood would become heated.

"Laws, honey," she made bold to say as she came forward and took the broom into her hard, muscular hands, "you go and set down. You's got no call to worry yo'se'f no-how 'bout housewuk."

"But you have enough to do already, Rose," said Mrs. Meeks kindly, and turning her eyes, in which tears glistened, away from the withered, kindly old face. She dared not meet the look of sympathy, being in that humor when even a dignified woman may be melted into indiscreet confidences under the temptation of a silent, intelligent championship.

Old Rose, however, began to sweep with those deft, smooth strokes that raise no dust, and with her head bent, she talked along in a seemingly purposeless fashion.

"I's an ole coon, Mis' Linda; a little extry wuk ain't goin' to hurt me none. You take keer yo'se'f, honey, an' don' wuk yo' good looks away. An' don' fret 'em away, neither. You mus'n't wu'y yo'se'f, chile. Never was er man wuth wu'yin' over. Ain't I had three husbands? De good Laud, He tuk Jim an' Abraham, an' den I, like a fool, tuk up wid Josh. An' he drunk an' drunk, an' den he cusses an' swear at me, an' me wu'kin' myse'f like er ole hoss, and den I jes gets up an' I say, 'Josh, I don' 'low no nigger ter cuss at me!' I says, 'You kin hev de inside of dis house an' I'll tek de outside,' and so I comes back ter de ole place, an' what Josh do? Why, Josh, he sober up, an' he 'gins ter see den w'at comes o' ugliness, an' he follow a'ter me, an' heah he is, gard'nin' fur Mr. Meeks. But when he comes home ter de shanty he don' cuss at me no mo'. Bes' way is jes ter let dese men know dere place, honey, once an' fur all."

After old Rose had gone out with the dust-pan, Mrs. Meeks sat still in the rocking chair by the window, from which she could see quite a distance down the road; but her vision was turned too intensely inward to admit of her taking any interest in the few passers-by.

Strange how a single sentence coming at the right time, will have a force that tons of inopportune advice has not. "Bes' way is jes ter let dese men know dere place, honey, once an' fur all." The sage, worldly-wise policy of this ignorant colored woman, to whom mother-wit had suggested methods culture could scarcely have rendered more effective, struck a chord in the heart of her mistress that would have failed to vibrate at any other moment. When causes of irritation are not present, one is simply amused in listening to recitals that piquantly set forth the temper of the subject, but when the mind is oppressed by a sense of long-smothered injuries, it turns a very different aspect toward experiences that appear similar to its own.

Mrs. Meeks would not have deliberately made herself, or permitted any one else to make comparisons between her husband and Uncle Josh, whose outward uncouthness removed him leagues distant from his master. Yet, with that gentleman's last muttered expression smarting in her ears, she quailed at the suggestion of a spiritual likeness between the two beings in their antipodal tweed and jeans. Floating in upon her disturbed mind came a certain rude epigram which she had heard in the kitchen years ago when, a tiny girl, she was playing about the door, and had remembered because it struck her as being funny: "All men's tar off de same stick."

"True!" said Mrs. Meeks bitterly, the tears falling now without disguise. "Men are all alike. I thought Robert was different. And our life together was to be a heaven upon earth? Well, this is the end of it all. I cannot stand his temper—I will not stand it!"

How far her resentful musings would have extended if she had been left a while longer in that worst of solitudes, the loneliness of affronted dignity, is uncertain, for her tears were suddenly checked by sounds of visitors. A keen-eyed, vivacious, middle-aged woman alighted at the door from an open carriage and made her way in without ceremony. Mrs. Meeks started up with intent to escape, but settled back in her chair again as her visitor entered with the little whirl and rush that characterizes the movements of a lively, excitable woman.

Her sharp black eyes took in the situation at a glance; the half-arranged room, Mrs. Meek's dishabille, her despondent attitude and the traces of tears. She advanced quickly and put out both hands, exclaiming in a voice of mingled affection and curiosity:

"Linda, what is the matter?"

"Oh, Louise, for once I am sorry to see you!"

These two women were lifelong friends; friends in the sense in which Virginians understand the term, their relations being of the sort that involves the frankest self-disclosure, and an immediate discussion of every important circumstance entering into their experience.

"Now, my dear," said Louise Gourlay, in a husky, emphatic voice, which to her torment she could never soften, "Providence sent me here this morning. I think too much of you not to understand at once what ails you. Mr. Meeks has been abusing you!"

Mrs. Meeks blushed and tried to look indignant, but only succeeded in looking unhappy.

"There is no use in talking about it," she said, bracing herself to encounter opposition. "Some things ought not to be talked about. It cannot help any. I can't go back and be a girl again." There was a slight pause and a struggle after control, and then she broke out with a sob: "Oh, Louise, why did I marry?"

"The good Lord only knows why any of us marry," answered the older woman, raising her eyes devoutly. "But I suppose the world has to be carried on some way. It isn't so much the marrying, after all, that's the trouble, as the foolishness afterward. Now, dear, you remember that I prophesied long ago that Mr. Meeks would tyrannize over you hand and foot, if you let him. A man can't help trying to rule the roost—mercy, what's all that row about?"

She broke off suddenly and got up to look out of the window as sounds of a great commotion in the garden turned the peaceful scene without into one of those miniature pandemoniums not uncommon in the country, where a flock of hens follow a Robin Hood of a spouse in his raids upon forbidden territory.

Robin Hood in this case was a superb black Spanish cock with large powers of leadership, and he had succeeded in marshaling his entire female troop into the geranium patch before Uncle Josh, soberly hoeing corn in the rear, was made aware of the invasion.

He ambled forward, waving his hat and shouting. Aunt Rose ran out, waving her apron, and the daring Robin Hood, making as much noise as both of them, strode back and forth, protecting while at the