Page:Her Benny - Silas K Hocking (Warne, 1890).djvu/200

176 "I don't believe," she would say bitterly, "that Joe cares a bit what I wears. It's not a bit of pleasure to try an' make oneself look nice, for he never notices."

And so she grew cross and sour. He never blamed her, it is true, but she complained to herself that he never praised her, and even when she got thoroughly out of temper, and gave him a good "blowing-up," his silence only exasperated her all the more.

"I'd rather a thousan' times over," she would say, "that he*d get cross, an' answer back again, than sit still, turnin' up his eyes like a dyin' dolphin."

Had Joe known all this, it would certainly have been a great trouble to him, and yet if he had known, it would doubtless have saved him many years of pain.

But after the morning to which we have alluded, Joe's conduct and manner changed in a remarkable degree. He became thoughtful and attentive and communicative, and he began to think, too, that his wife's temper was improving; and after a few weeks he was surprised at the wonderful change that had come over her, little dreaming that it was the change in himself that had produced the change in his wife.

The experiment to which we alluded in the opening sentences of this chapter was that of trying to get hold of his neighbours and acquaintances, and helping them if possible to a higher and better life. There were people living all round him—some of them he had known for twenty years—who never went to church or chapel, and who seemed utterly unconcerned about death and the great hereafter that