the closing and binding up and mollifying of a wound with ointment.
The man was of a far finer nature than any of those who thus judged
him, of whom some would doubtless have got out of their
difficulties sooner than he--only he was more honorable in debt
than they were out of it. A woman of strong sense, with an
undeveloped stratum of poetry in the heart of it, his wife was able
to appreciate the finer elements of his nature; and she let him see
very plainly that she did. This was strength and a lifting up of
the head to the husband, who in his youth had been oppressed by the
positiveness, and in his manhood by the opposition, of his mother,
whom the neighbours regarded as a woman of strength and faculty.
And now, although, all his life since, he had had to fight the wolf
as constantly as ever, things, even after his wife's death,
continued very different from what they had been before he married
her; his existence looked a far more acceptable thing seen through
the regard of his wife than through that of his neighbours. They
had been five years married before she brought him an heir to his
poverty, and she lived five years more to train him--then, after a
short illness, departed, and left the now aging man virtually alone
with his little child, coruscating spark of fresh vitality amidst
the ancient surroundings. This was the Cosmo who now, somewhat sore
at heart from the result of his cogitations, entered the kitchen in
search of his kind.

Another woman was sitting on a three-legged stool, just inside the
door, paring potatoes--throwing each, as she cut off what the old
lady, watching, judged a paring far too thick, into a bowl of
water. She looked nearly as old as her mistress, though she was
really ten years younger. She had come with the late mistress from
her father's house, and had always taken, and still took her part