hills, had entered upon an isolation that was to last till death.
With every month of ill-luck, Joel had grown more exacting and morose. He was one of those people who are headstrong without being strong in the head, and whose ill-conditioned nature the sweet uses of adversity turn sour. The cheese-making, too, chosen for its alleged profitableness, and because he knew a little about cows, turned out, as he managed it, to be an affair of little gain for unremitting toil, the brunt of which fell upon poor Eva, for Joel was no fonder than before of work. He became now a tyrannical taskmaster, she, a trembling slave; and daily he grew more brooding and sulky, and more grudging. He grudged everybody, and he grudged everything. Eva’s one remaining luxury was her daily cup of tea; very well, she could have her tea still—but it must come off the manuka-bushes. The potato-crop failed, the first year, in the wretched little garden he had made—so he never set hand to spade again. Eva had to milk the cows, morning and night, but he never allowed her one drop of the milk, even for the baby; all the milk must be made into cheese, and all the cheese, except for the veriest scrap, must be sold. What for? Not to buy other food—they lived almost entirely upon that reserve mouthful of cheese, and the wretched loaves of poor Eva’s incompetent baking. Not on household goods—old trunks and cases made their chairs and table, sacks of fern their bed, and the one easy chair of the house—sacred of course, to Joel—was a wooden stool. Still less on clothes—the bags that the flour was sent in made all Eva’s drapery
