CHAPTER XXII.
A PEEVISH DAY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.
THERE are few housekeepers who have not had their sick and peevish days.

I have had mine, as the reader will see by the following story, which I some time since ventured to relate, in the third person, and which I now take the liberty of introducing into these confessions.
"It is too bad, Rachel, to put me to all this trouble; and you know I can hardly hold up my head." Thus spoke Mrs.Smith, in a peevish voice, to a quiet looking domestic, who had been called up from the kitchen to supply some unimportant omission in the breakfast table arrangement.
Rachel looked hurt and rebuked, but made no reply.
"How could you speak in that way to Rachel ?" said Mr.Smith, as soon as the domestic had withdrawn.
"If you felt just as I do, Mr.Smith, you would speak cross, too!" Mrs.Smith replied a little warmly--"I feel just like a rag; and my head aches as if it would burst." "I know you feel badly, and I am very sorry for you.

But still, I suppose it is as easy to speak kindly as harshly.

Rachel is very obliging and attentive, and should be borne with in occasional omissions, which you of course know are not wilful." "It is easy enough to preach," retorted Mrs.Smith, whose temper, from bodily lassitude and pain, was in quite an irritable state.

The reader will understand at least one of the reasons of this, when he is told that the scene here presented occurred during the last oppressive week in August.
Mr.Smith said no more.