"Oh, yes," he answered, indifferently. "I can sit up straight as an
arrow, but I find this attitude most agreeable."

"If you knew how you looked," said Kate.

"How do I look?" asked the young man, playfully.

"Oh! you look--you look more like a country clod-hopper than any
thing else."

There was a sharpness in Kate's tones that fell unpleasantly on the
ears of the young man.

"Do I, indeed!" was his rather cold remark. Yet he did not change
his position.

"Indeed, you do," said the wife, who was, by this time, beginning to
feel a good deal of irritation; for she saw that Frederick was not
inclined to respond in the way she had hoped, to her very reasonable
desire that he would assume a more graceful attitude. "The fact is,"
she continued, impelled to further utterance by the excited state of
her feelings, although she was conscious of having already said more
than was agreeable to her husband, "you ought to correct yourself of
these ungraceful and undignified habits. It shows a want of"--

Kate stopped suddenly. She felt that she was about using words that
would inevitably give offence.

"A want of what?" inquired Lee, in a low, firm voice, while he
continued to look his young wife steadily in the face.