The Home Mission Part 11

"Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently. "I can sit up straight as an arrow, but I find this att.i.tude most agreeable."

"If you knew how you looked," said Kate.

"How do I look?" asked the young man, playfully.

"Oh! you look--you look more like a country clod-hopper than any thing else."

There was a sharpness in Kate's tones that fell unpleasantly on the ears of the young man.

"Do I, indeed!" was his rather cold remark. Yet he did not change his position.

"Indeed, you do," said the wife, who was, by this time, beginning to feel a good deal of irritation; for she saw that Frederick was not inclined to respond in the way she had hoped, to her very reasonable desire that he would a.s.sume a more graceful att.i.tude. "The fact is,"

she continued, impelled to further utterance by the excited state of her feelings, although she was conscious of having already said more than was agreeable to her husband, "you ought to correct yourself of these ungraceful and undignified habits. It shows a want of"--

Kate stopped suddenly. She felt that she was about using words that would inevitably give offence.

"A want of what?" inquired Lee, in a low, firm voice, while he continued to look his young wife steadily in the face.

Kate's eyes fell to the floor and she remained silent.

"Ungraceful and undignified. Humph!"

Lee was evidently hurt at this allegation, as the tone in which he repeated the words clearly showed.

"Do you call your present att.i.tude graceful?" Kate asked, rallying herself under the reflection that she was right.

"It is comfortable for me; and, therefore, ought to be graceful in your eyes," was the young man's perverse answer. Not the slightest change had yet taken place in his position.

This was beyond what the high spirited lady could bear, and she retorted with more feeling than discretion:

"Love is not blind in my case, I can a.s.sure you, Frederick, and never will be. You are very ungraceful and untidy, and annoy me, sometimes, excessively. I wish you would try to correct these things."

"You do?"

There was something cool and provoking in the way Lee said this.

"I do, Frederick, and I'm in earnest."

The cheeks of Kate were in a glow, and her eyes lit up, and her lips quivering.

"How long since you made the discovery that I was only a country clod-hopper?" said Lee, who was particularly annoyed by Kate's unexpected charges against his good-breeding.

"I didn't say you were only a country clod-hopper," replied Kate.

"I believe you used the words. My ears rarely deceive me. I must own to feeling highly complimented."

"Do sit up straight, Frederick! Do take your leg from over the arm of that chair! You make me so nervous that I can hardly contain myself."

"Really! I thought a man was privileged to sit in any position he pleased in his own house."

The excitement of Kate's mind had, by this time, reached a crisis.

Bursting into tears, she hurried from the room, and went sobbing up to her chamber.

Here was a fine state of affairs, indeed! Was ever a man so perverse and unreasonable?

Did Frederick Lee follow, quickly, his weeping wife? No; his pride was too deeply wounded for that.

"A country clod-hopper! Undignified and ungraceful! Upon my word!"

Such were some of his mental e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns. And then, as his feelings grew excited, he started up from his chair and began pacing the floor, muttering, as he did so--

"It is rather late in the day to make this discovery! Why didn't she find it out before? Humph!"

Meanwhile, Kate had thrown herself across her bed, where she lay, weeping bitterly.

What a storm had suddenly been blown about their ears!

It was fully an hour before Frederick Lee's disturbed feelings began to run at all clear. He was both surprised and offended. What could all this mean? What had all at once come over his young wife?

"A country clod-hopper!" he muttered to himself over and over again.

"Ungraceful--ungenteel, and all that! Very complimentary, indeed!"

When Lee joined his wife in their chamber, two hours after she had left him, he found that she had retired to bed and was sleeping.

On the next morning both looked very sober, and both were cold and distant. A few words only pa.s.sed between them. It was the same when they met at dinner-time, and the same when Lee came home in the evening. During the whole of this day, the thought of each was upon the other; but it was not a forgiving thought. Kate cherished angry feelings toward her husband; and Lee continued to be offended at the freedom of expression which his young wife had ventured to use toward him. Of course, both were very unhappy.

The formal intercourse of the tea-table having ended, Lee, feeling little inclined to pa.s.s the evening with his reserved and sober-looking partner, put on his hat, and merely remarking that he would not return until bed-time, left the house. This act startled Kate. With the jar of the closing door came a gush of tears. The evening was pa.s.sed alone. How wretched she felt as the hours moved slowly on!

It was nearly eleven o'clock when Lee came home. By that time, the mind of Kate was in an agony of suspense. More than once the thought that he had abandoned her intruded itself, and filled her with fear and anguish. What a relief to her feelings it was when she heard the rattle of his night-key in the lock! But she could not meet him with a smile. She could not throw her arms around his neck, and press her hot cheek to his. No: for she felt that he was angry with her without just cause, and had visited with unjust severity a light offence--if, so far as she was concerned, her act were worthy to be called an offence.

And so they looked coldly upon each other when they met, and then averted their eyes.

The morning broke, but with no fairer promise of a sunny day. Clouds obscured their whole horizon. Coldly they parted after the brief and scarcely tasted meal. How wretched they were!

During the forenoon, Mrs. Morton, the friend of Mrs. Lee, called in to see her young friend.

"Why, Kate! What has happened?" she exclaimed, the moment she saw her.

Mrs. Lee tried to smile and look indifferent, as she answered--

"Happened? Why do you say that?"

"You look as if you hadn't a friend left in the world!"

"And I don't know that I have," said Mrs. Lee, losing, all at once, her self-command, and permitting the ready tears to gush forth.

"Why, Kate, dear!" exclaimed Mrs. Morton, drawing her arm around the neck of her young friend. "What is the meaning of all this?

Something wrong with Frederick?"

Kate was silent.