Page:Camperdown - Griffith - 1836.djvu/260

 prise—quietly took her night things and her little work basket, and followed the bride home. She took possession of a snug room in the back building, which room she kept till her dying day. And there was Mr. Bangs himself; did he not every night, on his way home from his club, where he had spent all his evenings, excepting Sunday, for thirty years; did he not open the street door with his night-key, walk to the back door, bolt that and then latch the inside parlour window-shutters? He did this at his own house, from the day of his marriage, for his wife left this part of housekeeping duty purposely for him, "to keep him in mind," she said, "that he had a house and family to protect from thieves." Fanny Floss thought it part of her duty to let her father do this for her likewise; and her husband was so accustomed to all their ways, that he naturally fell into these agreeable regularities himself.

Well, then, Mr. Floss was a happy man; he went to the laboratory and came home; went and came; went and came, for seven years; and whenever his step was heard in the hall Fanny ran to meet him, to give him a kiss. If it rained, there was a dry coat ready for him; and if the day were warm, then she stood in the hall with a thin coat and a glass of lemonade. Every evening he saw her in the rocking-chair, either sewing or knitting; for now the three days for the poor had grown to three times three. Her good temper and excellent nature never varied; she was the gentlest, the tenderest, the purest and the most devoted wife that man was ever blessed with—what could he desire more? Did he wish her altered? Would any man wish such a wife to change?

Mr. Floss, as I observed, had an inquiring mind, and he went on from one point to another until he became a man of consequence; and, as Mr. Bangs