a square piece of wood judiciously hollowed out, and placed with one
corner to the front. Here, in full view of all the operations going
on over the fire, sat Daniel Robson for four live-long days,
advising and directing his wife in all such minor matters as the
boiling of potatoes, the making of porridge, all the work on which
she specially piqued herself, and on which she would have taken
advice--no! not from the most skilled housewife in all the three
Ridings. But, somehow, she managed to keep her tongue quiet from
telling him, as she would have done any woman, and any other man, to
mind his own business, or she would pin a dish-clout to his tail.
She even checked Sylvia when the latter proposed, as much for fun as
for anything else, that his ignorant directions should be followed,
and the consequences brought before his eyes and his nose.

'Na, na!' said Bell, 'th' feyther's feyther, and we mun respect him.
But it's dree work havin' a man i' th' house, nursing th' fire, an'
such weather too, and not a soul coming near us, not even to fall
out wi' him; for thee and me must na' do that, for th' Bible's sake,
dear; and a good stand-up wordy quarrel would do him a power of
good; stir his blood like. I wish Philip would turn up.'

Bell sighed, for in these four days she had experienced somewhat of
Madame de Maintenon's difficulty (and with fewer resources to meet
it) of trying to amuse a man who was not amusable. For Bell, good
and sensible as she was, was not a woman of resources. Sylvia's
plan, undutiful as it was in her mother's eyes, would have done
Daniel more good, even though it might have made him angry, than his
wife's quiet, careful monotony of action, which, however it might
conduce to her husband's comfort when he was absent, did not amuse
him when present.