Though the host of the Nutmeg-Grater had a lively regard for his
good-wife, it was of the old patronising kind, and she amused him
mightily. Nothing would have astonished him so much, as to have
known for certain from any third party, that it was she who managed
the whole house, and made him, by her plain straightforward thrift,
good-humour, honesty, and industry, a thriving man. So easy it is,
in any degree of life (as the world very often finds it), to take
those cheerful natures that never assert their merit, at their own
modest valuation; and to conceive a flippant liking of people for
their outward oddities and eccentricities, whose innate worth, if
we would look so far, might make us blush in the comparison!
It was comfortable to Mr. Britain, to think of his own
condescension in having married Clemency. She was a perpetual
testimony to him of the goodness of his heart, and the kindness of
his disposition; and he felt that her being an excellent wife was
an illustration of the old precept that virtue is its own reward.
He had finished wafering up the bill, and had locked the vouchers
for her day's proceedings in the cupboard - chuckling all the time,
over her capacity for business - when, returning with the news that
the two Master Britains were playing in the coach-house under the
superintendence of one Betsey, and that little Clem was sleeping
'like a picture,' she sat down to tea, which had awaited her
arrival, on a little table.
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