A man had a wife who was excessively harsh towards everyone in the household. He wanted to know whether she had the same temper towards her father's servants, so he sent her to her father's house on a plausible pretext. When, after a few days, she returned, he asked how the people of the house had received her. "The herdsmen and shepherds," she replied, "looked at me askance." "Well, wife," he said, "if you were ill thought of by those who drive the flocks out at dawn and come back only in the evening, what must it have been with those you spent the whole day with?"
Small signs often reveal greater truths, and visible things disclose what is hidden.
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