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“And you trust to his good sense to take the work of correction kindly?”

“Certainly I do.”

“Then you most probably think him more perfect than he really is. Very few people can bear to be told of their faults, and fewer still to be told of them by those they love. Love is expected to be blind to defects; therefore, when it is seen looking at and pointing them out, the feeling produced is, in the very nature of things, a disagreeable one. Take my advice, and let Frederick’s faults alone, at least for a year after you are married; and even then put your hand on them very lightly, and as if by accident.”

“Do you think I could see him lounge, or, rather, slide down in his chair in that ungraceful way, and not speak to him about it? Not I. It makes me nervous now; and, if I wasn’t afraid he might take it unkindly, would call his attention to it.”

“Do you think he will be less likely to take it unkindly after marriage?”

“Certainly. Then I will have a right to speak to him about it.”

“Then marriage will give you certain rights over your husband?”

“It will give him rights over me, and a very poor rule that is which doesn’t work both ways. Marriage will make him my husband; and, surely, a wife may tell her husband that he is not perfect, without offending him.”

“Kate, Kate; you don’t know what you are talking about, child!”

“I think I do.”

“And I know you don’t.”

“Oh, well, Mrs. Morton, we won’t quarrel about it,” said Kate, laughing. “I mean to make one of the best of wives, and have one of the best of husbands to be found. He will require a little fixing up to make him just to my mind, but don’t you fear but what I’ll do it in the gentlest possible manner. Women have more taste than men, you know, and a man never looks and acts just right until he gets a woman to take charge of him.”

A happy bride Kate became a few months after this little conversation took place, and Lee thought himself the most fortunate of men in obtaining such a lovely, accomplished, and right-minded woman for a wife. Swiftly glided away the sweet honey-moon, without a jar of discord, though, during the time, Kate saw a good many things not exactly to her mind, and which she set down as needing correction.

One evening, it was just five weeks after the marriage, and when they were snugly settled in their own house, Frederick Lee was seated before the grate, in a handsome rocking-chair, his body in a position that it would have required a stretch of language to pronounce graceful or becoming. He had drawn off one of his boots, that was lying on the floor, and the leg from which it had been taken was hanging over an arm of his chair. He had slipped forward in the chair–his ordinary mode of sitting, or, rather, lying–so far that his head, which, if he had been upright, would have been even with the top of the back, was at least twelve inches below it. To add to the effect of his position, he was swinging the bootless leg that hung across the arm of the chair with a rapid, circling motion. He had been reclining in this inelegant attitude for about ten minutes, when Kate, who had permitted herself to become a good deal annoyed by it, said to him, rather earnestly–

“Do, Frederick, sit up straight, and try and be a little more graceful in your positions.”

“What’s that?” inquired the young man, as if he had not heard distinctly.

“Can’t you sit up straight?”

Kate smiled; but Lee saw that it was a forced smile.

“Oh, yes,” he answered, indifferently. “I can sit up straight as an arrow, but I find this attitude most agreeable.”

“If you knew how you looked,” said Kate.