While Mr Easy talked philosophy, Mrs Easy played patience, and they
were a very happy couple, riding side by side on their hobbies, and
never interfering with each other. Mr Easy knew his wife could not
understand him, and therefore did not expect her to listen very
attentively; and Mrs Easy did not care how much her husband talked,
provided she was not put out in her game. Mutual forbearance will
always ensure domestic felicity.

There was another cause for their agreeing so well. Upon any disputed
question Mr Easy invariably gave it up to Mrs Easy, telling her that
she should have her own way and this pleased his wife; but, as Mr Easy
always took care, when it came to the point, to have his way, he was
pleased as well. It is true that Mrs Easy had long found out that she
did not have her own way long; but she was of an easy disposition, and
as, in nine cases out of ten, it was of very little consequence how
things were done, she was quite satisfied with his submission during
the heat of the argument. Mr Easy had admitted that she was right,
and if like all men he would do wrong, why, what could a poor woman
do? With a lady of such a. quiet disposition, it is easy to imagine
that the domestic felicity of Mr Easy was not easily disturbed. But,
as people have observed before, there is a mutability in human
affairs. It was at the finale of the eleventh year of their marriage
that Mrs Easy at first complained that she could not enjoy her
breakfast. Mrs Easy had her own suspicions, everybody else considered
it past doubt, all except Mr Easy; he little "thought, good easy man,
that his greatness was ripening"; he had decided that to have an heir
was no Easy task, and it never came into his calculations, that there
could be a change in his wife's figure. You might have added to it,
subtracted from it, divided it, or multiplied it, but as it was a
zero, the result would be always the same. Mrs Easy also was not