“Dear me!” said she, lighting a candle, and she spoke up very soft, too.  “Please, Aaron, don’t let the cold in on baby.  I’m sorry it was smoking, but I never knew a thing about it; he’s been fretting and taking on so the last hour, I didn’t notice anyway.”

“That’s just what you ought to have done,” says I, madder than ever.  “You know how I hate the stuff, and you ought to have cared more about me than to choke me up with it this way the last night before going in.”

Nancy was a patient, gentle-spoken sort of woman, and would bear a good deal from a fellow; but she used to fire up sometimes, and that was more than she could stand.  “You don’t deserve to be cared about, for speaking like that!” says she, with her cheeks as red as peat-coals.

That was right before the children.  Mary Ann’s eyes were as big as saucers, and little Nancy was crying at the top of her lungs, with the baby tuning in, so we knew it was time to stop.  But stopping wasn’t ending; and folks can look things that they don’t say.

We sat down to supper as glum as pump-handles, there were some fritters—­I never knew anybody beat your mother at fritters—­smoking hot off the stove, and some maple molasses in one of the best chiny tea-cups; I knew well enough it was just on purpose for my last night, but I never had a word to say, and Nancy crumbed up the children’s bread with a jerk.  Her cheeks didn’t grow any whiter; it seemed as if they would blaze right up,—­I couldn’t help looking at them, for all I pretended not to, for she looked just like a picture.  Some women always are pretty when they are put out,—­and then again, some ain’t; it appears to me there’s a great difference in women, very much as there is in hens; now, there was your aunt Deborah,—­but there, I won’t get on that track now, only so far as to say that when she was flustered up she used to go red all over, something like a piny, which didn’t seem to have just the same effect.

That supper was a very dreary sort of supper, with the baby crying, and Nancy getting up between the mouthfuls to walk up and down the room with him; he was a heavy little chap for a ten-month-old, and I think she must have been tuckered out with him all day.  I didn’t think about it then; a man doesn’t notice such things when he’s angry,—­it isn’t in him.  I can’t say but she would if I’d been in her place.  I just eat up the fritters and the maple molasses,—­seems to me I told her she ought not to use the best chiny cup, but I’m not just sure,—­and then I took my pipe, and sat down in the corner.

I watched her putting the children to bed; they made her a great deal of bother, squirming off of her lap and running round barefoot.  Sometimes I used to hold them and talk to them and help her a bit, when I felt good-natured, but I just sat and smoked, and let them alone.  I was all worked up about that lamp-wick, and I thought, you see, if she hadn’t had any feelings for me there was no need of my having any for her—­if she had cut the wick, I’d have taken the babies; she hadn’t cut the wick, and I wouldn’t take the babies; she might see it if she wanted to, and think what she pleased.  I had been badly treated, and I meant to show it.