If a _man_ had dared to attack him on his domestic shortcomings, he could have fought.

The girl stood waiting for him, her large, steady eyes full of thought, gazing down at him from the shadow of her broad-brimmed hat.
"The world is so full of misery anyway, that we ought to do the best we can to make it less," she said at last, in a musing tone, as if her thoughts had unconsciously taken on speech.

She had always appealed to him strongly, and never more so than in this softly-uttered abstraction--that it was an abstraction added to its power with him.
He could find no words for reply, but picked up his hammer and nail-box, and slouched along the road by her side, listening without a word to her talk.
"Christ was patient, and bore with his enemies.

Surely we ought to bear with our--friends," she went on, adapting her steps to his.

He took off his torn straw hat and wiped his face on his sleeve, being much embarrassed and ashamed.