You would never have asked, at any period of Mrs.Amos Barton's life, if she sketched or played the piano.
You would even perhaps have been rather scandalized if she had descended from the serene dignity of _being_ to the assiduous unrest of _doing_.
Happy the man, you would have thought, whose eye will rest on her in the pauses of his fireside reading--whose hot aching forehead will be soothed by the contact of her cool soft hand who will recover himself from dejection at his mistakes and failures in the loving light of her unreproaching eyes! You would not, perhaps, have anticipated that this bliss would fall to the share of precisely such a man as Amos Barton, whom you have already surmised not to have the refined sensibilities for which you might have imagined Mrs.Barton's qualities to be destined by pre-established harmony.

But I, for one, do not grudge Amos Barton this sweet wife.

I have all my life had a sympathy for mongrel ungainly dogs, who are nobody's pets; and I would rather surprise one of them by a pat and a pleasant morsel, than meet the condescending advances of the loveliest Skye-terrier who has his cushion by my lady's chair.

That, to be sure, is not the way of the world: if it happens to see a fellow of fine proportions and aristocratic mien, who makes no _faux pas_, and wins golden opinions from all sorts of men, it straightway picks out for him the loveliest of unmarried women, and says, _There_ would be a proper match! Not at all, say I: let that successful, well-shapen, discreet and able gentleman put up with something less than the best in the matrimonial department; and let the sweet woman go to make sunshine and a soft pillow for the poor devil whose legs are not models, whose efforts are often blunders, and who in general gets more kicks than halfpence.
She--the sweet woman--will like it as well; for her sublime capacity of loving will have all the more scope; and I venture to say, Mrs.Barton's nature would never have grown half so angelic if she had married the man you would perhaps have had in your eye for her--a man with sufficient income and abundant personal eclat.

Besides, Amos was an affectionate husband, and, in his way, valued his wife as his best treasure.
But now he has shut the door behind him, and said, 'Well, Milly!' 'Well, dear!' was the corresponding greeting, made eloquent by a smile.
'So that young rascal won't go to sleep! Can't you give him to Nanny ?' 'Why, Nanny has been busy ironing this evening; but I think I'll take him to her now.' And Mrs.Barton glided towards the kitchen, while her husband ran up-stairs to put on his maize-coloured dressing-gown, in which costume he was quietly filling his long pipe when his wife returned to the sitting-room.