It had been a source of bitter humiliation to him to see his wife sitting there beneath the pulpit, shorn by despotic order of the adornments natural to her pretty head.

But he had even greater pain in contemplating the effect it had produced on Alice herself.

She had said not a word on the subject, but her every glance and gesture seemed to him eloquent of deep feeling about it.

He made sure that she blamed him for having defended his own gas and sidewalk rights with successful vigor, but permitted the sacrifice of her poor little inoffensive roses without a protest.

In this view of the matter, indeed, he blamed himself.