Elizabeth greeted her husband that night with a speculative anxiety in
her eyes born of the uncomfortable misgivings which had haunted her
during the day. And when after dinner he dropped asleep over his evening
paper she perceived with a sharp pang of apprehension that his face was
thinner than she had ever seen it, that his healthy colour had paled
somewhat, and that hitherto unnoticed lines had begun to show themselves
about his mouth and eyes.
She reached for his hand which hung idly by his side, and the light
touch awakened him. "Oh, Sam," she began, "Grandma Carroll insisted upon
it that you were looking ill, and I wanted to see if you had any fever;
working over there in that unhealthy part of town, you might have caught
something."
"Who told you it was unhealthy?" he wanted to know. "It really isn't at
all, little girl, and you're not to worry about me--or anything."
At just what point in his career Samuel Brewster had acquired the
Quixotic idea that a woman, and particularly a young and beautiful
woman, should not be allowed to taste the smallest drop of the world's
bitterness he could not have explained. But the notion, albeit a
mistaken one, was as much a part of himself as the blue of his steadfast
eyes or the bronzy brown of his crisp locks.
"You're not," he repeated positively, "to give yourself the slightest
anxiety about me. I never felt better in my life." And he smiled
determinedly.
"But, Sam dear, I shall be obliged to worry if you are going to be ill,
or if--" a misty light breaking in upon her confused thoughts, "you are
keeping anything from me that I ought to know. I've been thinking about
it all day, and I've been wondering if--" she lowered her voice
cautiously--"Annita is perfectly reliable. I've always thought so till
to-day. Anyway, she's going to leave to-morrow, and you'll be obliged
to go back to my cooking for a while, till I can get some one else."
The somewhat vague explanations which followed called for an examination
of grocer's and butcher's accounts; and the two heads were bent so
closely over the parti-coloured slips that neither heard the hasty
preparations for departure going on in the rear.
"It looks to me as if our domestic had been spoiling the Egyptians,"
hazarded Sam, after half an hour of unsatisfactory work. "But I really
don't know how much meat, groceries and stuff we ought to be using."
"I might have found out," murmured Elizabeth contritely. "I've just gone
on enjoying myself like a child, and--and I'm afraid I've spent too much
money. I haven't kept any count."
Her husband glanced at her pretty worried face with a frown of
perplexity and annoyance between his honest eyes. "The fact is, Betty,"
he burst out, "a poor man has no business to marry and make a woman
uncomfortable and unhappy. You haven't spent but a trifle, dear, and
all on the simplest, most innocent pleasures; yet it does count up so
confoundedly. I wanted you to have a good time, dear, and I
couldn't--bear--" He dropped into a chair and thrust his hands deep into
his pockets.
"Then we _have_ been spending too much on--contingencies; why didn't you
tell me before?"
He bit his lip. "We've spent nearly every dollar of our reserve, Betty,"
he said slowly, "and this month I'm afraid--I don't see how I am going
to meet all of the bills."
"Oh, Sam!" gasped Elizabeth, turning pale.
A voice from the softly opened kitchen door broke in upon, this crucial
conversation. "You'll please to excuse me, Mrs. Brewster, but I've had
word that my mother is sick, an' I'll have to be leaving at once. My
month's up in the morning anyway, an' I hope you'll not mind paying me
my wages to-night."
Her lip curled scornfully as she glanced at the tradesmen's slips
scattered on the table. Miss McMurtry openly despised people who, as
she expressed it, were always "trying to save a copper cent on their
meat and groceries." She herself felt quite above such economies. One
could always change one's place, and being somewhat versed in common
law, she felt reasonably secure in such small pecadilloes as she had
seen fit to commit while in the employ of the Brewsters.
"I should like to ask you a few questions first about these accounts,"
said the inexperienced head of the house sternly. "How does it happen
that you ordered fifteen pounds of sugar, seven pounds of butter and two
of coffee last week? Surely Mrs. Brewster and I never consumed such an
amount of provisions as I see we have paid for."
Miss McMurtry's elbows vibrated slightly. "I only ordered what was
needed, sir," she replied in a high, shrill voice. "Sure, you told me
yourself not to bother the madame."
"I did tell you that, I know. I thought you were to be trusted, but this
doesn't look like it."
A fearsome change came over the countenance of the respectable young
person in the frilled apron. "Are you meaning to insinooate that _I_
took them groceries?" she demanded fiercely. "I'll ask you to prove that
same. Prove it, I say! It's a lie, an' I'd be willin' to swear to it in
a court of justice. That's what comes of me workin' for poor folks that
can't pay their bills!" Miss McMurtry swung about on her heels and
included Elizabeth in the lightning of her gaze. "I come here to
accomydate her, thinkin' she was a perfec' lady, an' I've slaved night
an' day in her kitchen a-tryin' my best to please her, an' this is what
I gets for it! But you can't take my character away that easy; I've the
best of references; an' I'll trouble you for my wages--if you can pay
'em. If not, there's ways I can collect 'em."
"Pay her, Sam, and let her go, do!" begged Elizabeth in a frightened
whisper.
"I ought not to pay the girl, I'm sure of that; but to save you further
annoyance, my dear--" He counted out twenty-two dollars, and pushed the
little pile of bills across the table. "Take it," he said peremptorily,
"and go."
The two gazed at each other in silence while the loud trampling
footsteps of the erstwhile gentle and noiseless Annita sounded in the
rear. Then, when a violent and expressive bang of the kitchen door
announced the fact that their domestic had finally shaken off the dust
of her departure against them, Elizabeth burst into a relieved laugh.
She came presently and perched on her husband's knee.
"Sam, dear," she murmured, "it is all my fault, every bit of it. No;
don't contradict me--nor interrupt--please! We can't afford to go on
this way, and we're not going to. We'll begin over again, just as we
meant to before I--" she paused while a flood of shamed colour swept
over her drooped face "--tried to be fashionable. It isn't really so
very much fun to go to card-parties and teas and luncheons, and I don't
care a bit about it all, especially if--if it is going to cost us too
much; and I--can see that it has already."
All her little newly acquired graces and affectations dropped away as
she spoke, and her husband saw the sweet, womanly soul he had loved and
longed for in the beginning looking out of her brown eyes. He kissed her
thankfully, almost solemnly. "Dear Betty," he whispered.
"Couldn't we--go away from this place?" she went on after a while. "It
isn't very pleasant, is it? and--I'm almost ashamed to say it--but
Evelyn Tripp has such a way of making things look different to one. What
she says sounds so--so _sensible_ that I can't--at least I haven't done
as I intended in hardly anything."
"There's a little red cottage to let, with a pocket-handkerchief lawn in
front and room for a garden behind, not half a mile from where we are
working," Sam told her, "but I haven't mentioned it because it's a long
way to Tremont Street and--Evelyn." His blue eyes were full of the
laughing light she had missed vaguely for more weeks than she cared to
remember.
"Let's engage it to-morrow!" exclaimed Elizabeth. "Why, Sam dear, we
could have roses and strawberries and all sorts of fun out there!"
When, after missing her friend for several days, Miss Tripp called at
the Brewster apartment she was astonished beyond measure to find her
dearest Elizabeth busy packing some last trifles, while several brawny
men were engaged in taking away the furniture.
"_My dear!_" she exclaimed. "What _are_ you doing?"
"We're moving," said Elizabeth tranquilly. "You know I never cared
particularly for this apartment, the rooms are so dark and unpleasant;
besides the rent is too high for us."
"But _where_----"
"I was just going to tell you; we've taken a little house away over near
the new water-works." Then as Miss Tripp's eyebrows and shoulders
expressed a surprise bordering on distraction, "I felt that it would be
better for us both to be nearer Sam's work. He can come home to luncheon
now, and I--we shall like that immensely."
"But you're going _out of the world_; do you _realise_ that, my dear?
And _just_ as you were beginning to be known, too; and when I've tried
so hard to--" Miss Tripp's voice broke, and she touched her eyelids
delicately with her handkerchief. "Oh, _why_ didn't you consult _me_
before taking such an irrevocable step? I'm sure I could have persuaded
you to change your mind."
Elizabeth opened her lips to reply; then she hesitated at sight of
Evelyn's wan face, whereon the lavishly applied rice powder failed to
conceal the traces of the multiplied fatigues and disappointments of a
purely artificial life.
"You'll be glad you didn't try to make me change my mind when you see
our house," she said gaily. "It has all been painted and papered, and
everything about the place is as fresh and sunny and delightful as this
place is dark and dingy and disagreeable. Only think, Evelyn, there is a
real fireplace in the living room, where we are going to burn real wood
of an evening, and the bay-window in the dining-room looks out on a
grass-plot bordered with rose-bushes!"
"But the neighbourhood, dear!" wailed Evelyn. "Only think what a social
Sahara you are going into!"
"I don't know about that," Elizabeth told her calmly. "Several of the
engineers who are working with Sam live near with their families, and
Sam thinks we are going to enjoy it immensely. He is so glad we are
going."
Evelyn had folded her hands in her lap and sat looking hopelessly about
the dismantled rooms. "You don't seem to think about me, Betty," she
said, after a while. "I--I am going to miss you terribly." Tears shone
in her faded eyes and her voice trembled.
Elizabeth's warm heart was touched. "You've been very good to me,
Evelyn," she said. "I shall never forget all that I've--learned from
you. But we're really not going out of the world, and you shall come and
see us whenever you will, and bye and bye we shall have strawberries and
roses to offer you."