Jeroboam by Guy de Maupassant — Read

Anyone who said, or even insinuated, that the Reverend William Greenfield, Vicar of St. Sampson's, Tottenham, did not make his wife Anna perfectly happy, would certainly have been very malicious. In their twelve years of married life, he had honored her with twelve children, and could anybody decently ask anything more of a saintly man?

Saintly to heroism in truth! For his wife Anna, who was endowed with invaluable virtues, which made her a model among wives and a paragon among mothers, had not been equally endowed physically, for, in one word, she was hideous. Her hair, which was coarse though it was thin, was the color of the national _half-and-half_, but of thick _half-and-half_ which looked as if it had been already swallowed several times, and her complexion, which was muddy and pimply, looked as if it were covered with sand mixed with brickdust. Her teeth, which were long and protruding, seemed as if they were about to start out of their sockets in order to escape from that mouth with scarcely any lips, whose sulphurous breath had turned them yellow. They were evidently suffering from bile.