I am not sure that he would not have longed for the quarrelling again, if it had ceased for an entire week; and it is certain that an acquiescent, mild wife would have left his meditations comparatively jejune and barren of mystery.
Mr.Glegg's unmistakable kind-heartedness was shown in this, that it pained him more to see his wife at variance with others,--even with Dolly, the servant,--than to be in a state of cavil with her himself; and the quarrel between her and Mr.Tulliver vexed him so much that it quite nullified the pleasure he would otherwise have had in the state of his early cabbages, as he walked in his garden before breakfast the next morning.

Still, he went in to breakfast with some slight hope that, now Mrs.Glegg had "slept upon it," her anger might be subdued enough to give way to her usually strong sense of family decorum.

She had been used to boast that there had never been any of those deadly quarrels among the Dodsons which had disgraced other families; that no Dodson had ever been "cut off with a shilling," and no cousin of the Dodsons disowned; as, indeed, why should they be?
For they had no cousins who had not money out at use, or some houses of their own, at the very least.
There was one evening-cloud which had always disappeared from Mrs.
Glegg's brow when she sat at the breakfast-table.

It was her fuzzy front of curls; for as she occupied herself in household matters in the morning it would have been a mere extravagance to put on anything so superfluous to the making of leathery pastry as a fuzzy curled front.

By half-past ten decorum demanded the front; until then Mrs.
Glegg could economize it, and society would never be any the wiser.
But the absence of that cloud only left it more apparent that the cloud of severity remained; and Mr.Glegg, perceiving this, as he sat down to his milkporridge, which it was his old frugal habit to stem his morning hunger with, prudently resolved to leave the first remark to Mrs.Glegg, lest, to so delicate an article as a lady's temper, the slightest touch should do mischief.