"I get sick of it!" she told Martin.

"Well, Lord!" he exclaimed. "Don't you think everybody does? Don't
I get sick of my work? You ought to have the responsibility of it
all for a while!"

His tone was humorously reproving rather than unkind. But such a
speech would fill Cherry's eyes with tears, and cause her to go
about the house all morning with a heavy heart.

She would find herself looking thoughtfully at Martin in these
days, studying him as if he were an utter stranger. It bewildered
her to feel that he actually was no more than that, after two
years of marriage. She not only did not know him, but she had a
baffled sense that the very nearness of their union prevented her
from seeing him fairly. She knew that she did him injustice in her
thoughts.

It MUST be injustice, decided Cherry. For Martin seemed to her
less clever, less just, less intelligent, and less generous than
the average man of her acquaintance. And yet he did not seem to
impress other people in the way he impressed her.

He was extraordinarily healthy, and had small sympathy for
illness, weakness, for the unfortunate, and the complaining. He
was scrupulously clean, and Cherry added that to his credit,
although the necessity of seeing that Martin's bath, Martin's
shaving water, and Martin's clean linen were ready complicated her
duties somewhat. He was not interested in the affairs of the day;