“It makes a body feel as if they hadn’t a thing fit to wear, the way Mrs. Eldred comes out in her silks and velvets,” Mrs. Jenks, a mechanic’s wife, remarked to her neighbour.  I wonder what she’d say to wearing a black alpaca dress seven years running, for her best dress!  I declared, it made me feel as if there wa’n’t any sort of use scrimping and saving as we do, to pay fifteen dollars a year to support the minister; I told John we better not pay but five next year, and I’d put the other ten on my back.  He’s got a rich wife, he don’t need much salary now.  Just to think of her fur sacque, and great handsome shawl, and here I havn’t had a new cloak this ten years—­have to wear my blanket shawl to church.

“Yes, I think’s much!” answered Mrs. Myers, emphatically.  “She’s as proud as Lucifer, too.  Mr. Eldred shook hands with me real friendly like last Sunday, and asked ’How is the little one?’—­as he always calls my Tommy—­then he introduced me to her, and she turned her head toward me, and looked at me from head to foot, exactly as if she was saying to herself ’Dress, twenty-five cents a yard; shawl five dollars, hat, two dollars;’ then she gave me what she’d call a bow may be, she swept her eyelashes down, and tilted her head back, instead of forward, and I thought I saw the least mite of a curl on her lip, (she’s got a dreadful proud mouth, anyway;) she didn’t offer to put out her hand, not she! she was afraid I’d soil her white kids, with something less than a dozen buttons on them.”

“Well, it’s too bad,” Mrs. Jenks said, “and he such a good Christian man as he is—­wonder what he wanted to go and marry such a wife for, anyhow; I don’t believe he more than half approves of her himself, now he sees how she goes on, but, poor man, he’s got to make the best of it now; I shall always think everything of him though, he was so kind to us when Peter was sick.”

Mrs. Eldred was not entirely ignorant of the duties expected from a minister’s wife, but she had resolved, as far as she was concerned, to ignore them.  Because she had married a minister was no sign that she was to be subject to the whims of a whole parish; she could consider herself bound by no rules that did not apply equally as well to every other member of the church.  Her mother had forewarned her, and advised her to this course: 

“A minister’s wife, my dear,” said the worldly-wise mother, “is usually a slave.  So just put your foot down in the beginning, and don’t wear yourself out.  Enjoy yourself all you can.  Poor child! it is a dismal life at best that you have chosen for yourself, I fear.”

Mrs. Eldred did not state her peculiar views to her husband, by any means; she should just quietly carry out her plans, and he would learn to submit in time.  Mother said that was the way to manage a husband.

It was Thursday night.  The first bell for prayer-meeting was ringing when Mr. Eldred came down from his study.  His young wife sat under the drop-light cosily established in a large easy-chair, absorbed in the last number of Scribner.  She was robed in a white flannel wrapper, and her long, fair hair was unbound, lying in bright waves about her shoulders.  Mr. Eldred contemplated the pretty picture a moment, then he said: