But it was only a show.

He always meant to surrender in the end.

Whenever his wife ceased her fire of small-arms and herself hung out the flag of truce, he instantly capitulated.

As in every other dispute, so in this one about the discharge of the "miserable, impudent Dutchman," Mrs.Anderson attacked her husband at all his weak points, and she had learned by heart a catalogue of his weak points.

Then, when he was sufficiently galled to be entirely miserable; when she had expressed her regret that she hadn't married somebody with some heart, and that she had ever left her father's house, for her _father_ was _always_ good to her; and when she had sufficiently reminded him of the lover she had given up for him, and of how much _he_ had loved her, and how miserable she had made _him_ by loving Samuel Anderson--when she had conducted the quarrel through all the preliminary stages, she always carried her point in the end by a _coup de partie_ somewhat in this fashion: "That's just the way! Always the way with you men! I suppose I must give up to you as usual.