"Oh, no, not much," she answered, "give me five hundred dollars and I will do everything necessary to make us comfortable for the winter."
"Five hundred dollars, Mrs. Kennedy!" and the doctor's gray eyes looked as they used to look when Katy and Matty asked him for five.
"Five hundred dollars! Preposterous! Why, during the seven years I lived with your predecessor she did not cost me that!"
From old Hannah Mrs. Kennedy had, learned how her predecessor had been stinted by the doctor, and could he that moment have looked into her heart he would have seen there a fierce determination to avenge the wrongs so meekly borne. But she did not embody her thoughts in words, neither did she deem it advisable to press the subject further at that time, so she waited for nearly a week, and then resumed the attack with redoubled zeal.
"We must have another servant," she said.
"Old Hannah is wholly inefficient, and so I have engaged a colored woman from the hotel; and did I tell you, I have spoken to a man about the furnace we are going to have, and I also told Mr. Jenks to buy me one hundred yards of Brussels carpeting in New York. He's gone for goods, you know."
"Really, Mrs. Kennedy, this exceeds all. My former companions saw fit to consult me always. Really, one hundred yards of carpeting and a black cook! Astonishing, Mrs. Kennedy! "
The doctor was quite too much confounded to think of a single maxim, for his wife's effrontery took him wholly by surprise. She was a most energetic woman, and her proceedings were already the theme of many a tea-table gossip, in which the delighted villagers exulted that Dr. Kennedy had at last found his match. Yes, he had found his match, and when next day the black cook, Rose, came, and Mr. Brown asked when he would have the furnace put in his cellar, there was that in the eye of his better half which prompted a meek submission.
When the bill for the new carpets was handed him he again rebelled, but all to no purpose. He paid the requisite amount, and tried to swallow his wrath with his wife's consolatory remark, that "they were the handsomest couple in town, and ought to have the handsomest carpets!"
One day he found her giving directions to two or three men who were papering, painting, and whitewashing Maude's room, and then, as John remarked, he seemed more like himself than he had done before since his last marriage.
"If Maude is going to be blind," he said, "it can make no difference with her how her chamber looks, and 'tis a maxim of mine to let well enough alone."
"I wish you would cure yourself of those disagreeable maxims," was the lady's cool reply, as, stepping to the head of the stairs, she bade John "bring up the carpet, if it were whipped enough."
"Allow me to ask what you are going to do with it?" said the doctor, as from the windows he saw the back parlor carpet swinging on the line.
"Why, I told you I was going to fit up Maude's room. She is coming home in a week, you know, and I am preparing a surprise. I have ordered a few pieces of light furniture from the cabinet-maker's, and I think her chamber would look nicely if the walls were only a little higher. They can't be raised, I suppose?"
She was perfectly collected, and no queen on her throne ever issued her orders with greater confidence in their being obeyed; and when that night she said to her husband, "These men must have their pay," he had no alternative but to open his purse and give her what she asked. Thus it was with everything.
"Ki, aint him cotchin' it good?" was John's mental comment, as he daily watched the proceedings, and while Hannah pronounced him "the hen-peck-ed-est man she had ever seen," the amused villagers knew that will had met will, and been conquered!
