And Samuel Anderson reddened, and declared that he would protect his wife from such insults.

The notion that he protected his wife was a pleasant fiction of the little man's, which received a generous encouragement at the hands of his wife.

It was a favorite trick of hers to throw herself, in a metaphorical way, at his feet, a helpless woman, and in her feebleness implore his protection.
And Samuel felt all the courage of knighthood in defending his inoffensive wife.

Under cover of this fiction, so flattering to the vanity of an overawed husband, she had managed at one time or another to embroil him with almost all the neighbors, and his refusal to join fences had resulted in that crooked arrangement known as a "devil's lane" on three sides of his farm.
Julia dared not stay away from dinner, which was miserable enough.

She did not venture so much as to look at August, who sat opposite her, and who was the most unhappy person at the table, because he did not know what all the unhappiness was about.