Adventures in Contentment

"This is an uncommonly heavy package," he remarked; "did I say table-spoons?" "Go on!" commanded Harriet; "your wife will understand." "All right--good-bye again," and his sturdy figure soon disappeared in the dark. "The impractical man!" exclaimed Harriet. "People impose on him." "What was in that package, Harriet?" "Oh, I put in a few jars of jelly and a cake of honey." After a moment Harriet looked up from her work. "Do you know the greatest sorrow of the Scotch preacher and his wife?" "What is it?" I asked. "They have no chick nor child of their own," said Harriet. It is prodigious, the amount of work required to make a good axe-helve--I mean to make it according to one's standard. I had times of humorous discouragement and times of high elation when it seemed to me I could not work fast enough. Weeks passed when I did not touch the helve but left it standing quietly in the corner. Once or twice I took it out and walked about with it as a sort of cane, much to the secret amusement, I think, of Harriet. At times Harriet takes a really wicked delight in her superiority. Early one morning in March the dawn came with a roaring wind, sleety snow drove down over the hill, the house creaked and complained in every clapboard. A blind of one of the upper windows, wrenched loose from its fastenings, was driven shut with such force that it broke a window pane. When I rushed up to discover the meaning of the clatter and to repair the damage, I found the floor covered with peculiar long fragments of glass--the pane having been broken inward from the centre.