She sat perfectly still, staring at the thick ink-scrawled paper. If he had caught the next packet, he would arrive in a week or so. She saw him suddenly as though he stood in the low room beside her: his glossy whiskers framing the dark heavy face, his thick-barreled body stuffed into his favorite indigo-blue coat, his truculent eyes, suspicious as those of a maltreated dog. She saw details which she had never consciously noted: the black hairs in his nostrils, the pudginess of his hands with their blunt, insensitive fingers. But he was her husband, and he loved her. She knew that she and the baby were the only things he loved. As always she felt a remote pity for him. Poor Joseph. They said pity was akin to love. Sometimes she had very nearly come to believe it. She would never believe it again. Passionate love between man and woman was not compounded of pity. It was storm and lightning and beauty and desire, not pity, with its implicit condescension and superiority.

'Aha,' said Aaron, coming into the room, his greatcoat streaming, his arms full of sodden packages. 'A letter from the South, I see.'

She nodded. 'Joseph is coming North to join us.'

His quick black eyes glanced at her curiously. She did not look the picture of an eager wife about to be joyously reunited with her husband. Nor for that matter did Joseph's advent fill him with any elation. The grumpy young man bored him, and was at present not particularly useful. Still, one must make the best of things.

'Capital!' he exclaimed heartily. 'Look, Theo, I found a Swiss music-box for Gampy. Though I see that the young gentleman has at last mercifully ceased to roar. I think, by the by, that you're not feeding him right. All that pap, and porridge, and sugar teats. He needs goat's milk. I bought a goat, just now; the stable boy is tethering it in back. Give the baby goat's milk twice a day.'

'Oh, Father!' she exclaimed, half-laughing. 'You'll be telling me how to diaper and physic him next.'

'No doubt I shall if I think you are not doing it properly. I think you will admit that my ideas are usually sound'. 'Indeed they are,' she agreed sincerely.

Aaron unwrapped the Swiss music-box. It was an intricate affair of trilling birds and dancing peasants and from underneath issued the pleasing tinkle of folksongs.

'It's delightful!' she cried; 'but wasn't it very dear?'

'It was,' agreed Aaron cheerfully. 'It cost twenty-five dollars, and I haven't a sou left. I bought also a volume of Burke's Vindication of Natural Society for you. It's high time you did some more serious reading, lazy baggage. I was scandalized to see a silly romance like Castle Rackrent on your table. I'll wager you haven't construed a line of Latin since I saw you last.'