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 and sevens than ever, his children had taken on more than ever the semblance of street-ragamuffins, and as for his food, he was left to the mercy of the most inefficient servant who had yet dispensed indigestion to this long-suffering household.

Yet Anson possessed himself in patience all through the time of rehearsals. He was even magnanimous enough to take a pride in his wife's success. He was a little bewildered, indeed, by the ease and naturalness with which she played the part of designing coquette, but her eagerness, when she turned to her rightful lord for approval, once the play being ended, proved entirely reassuring.

The next day Anson laid before her his list of grievances, and waited in the lingering hope of better things. Alas! It was a vain hope. Emmeline took his fault-finding in the sweetest spirit, promised to "see to things," and to "speak to" the servant, and immediately became absorbed in the manufacture of a pair of slippers for her husband's birthday, and forgot all about everything else.

Anson felt deeply injured, as he certainly had a right to do. He thought bitterly of his own hardworking life, of how he never looked to the right nor to the left when in the path of duty, of the discomforts and vexations he had endured for all these years, and his heart became hard within him.

On the evening of the third day after the the-