"And if she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk almost anything to prove Mrs.Thaddler in the wrong." Mrs.Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable.

She used what power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition.

He never argued with his wife--she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make against him, which mode him angrily silent.

He was convinced in a dim way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even in their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain and discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it, naturally.
"That Diantha Bell is a fine girl," he said to himself.

"A damn fine girl, and as straight as a string!" There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were.