Page:Confessions of a wife (IA confessionsofwif00adamiala).pdf/146

always grown up with the feeling that families that changed servants were not quite respectable. I told Dana that he ought to leave the management of the servants to me. He said, "D—n!"

Then he put on his hat and went out. There is no music to-night. Luella and the cook are conspiring in the kitchen, and Job and I are tête-à-tête, exchanging confidences.

Dana was charming this evening. I think he is sorry. I had found some good old prints of Landseer's dogs, and cut them out and pasted them up over the breaks in the calcimine, above the sofa, something like the frieze of a dado; really, they have quite an effect of their own.

"You always were clever," he said, and kissed me twice. Job was positively jealous of the Landseer dogs. We held him up, and I stroked the dogs, and Job growled and snarled and flew at them. Dana was immensely amused. He named one of the dogs David, and the other Dora. We have had a happy evening, and Luella has consented to stay.

The night is all a palette of pale greens and fair blues and grays after the storm, and there is no banshee. The apple-tree is in blossom, and the tree-house is drifted with snow of pink and