[Footnote 1: The characters in this narrative are fictitious. The
incidents the author does not profess to have witnessed. But they are
given as related by eye-witnesses whose testimony would command a
verdict from any honest jury. The author, however, draws no conclusions
and suggests none.]
Alison was sitting on a bandbox. She had generally been sitting on a
bandbox for three weeks,--or on a bushel-basket, or a cupboard shelf, or
a pile of old newspapers, or the baby's bath-tub. On one occasion it was
the baby himself. She mistook him for the rag-bag.
If ever we had to move again,--which all the beneficence of the Penates
forbid!--my wife should be locked into the parlor, and a cargo of
Irishwomen turned loose about the premises to "attend to things." What
it is that women find to do with themselves in this world I have never
yet discovered. They are always "attending to things." Whatever that
may mean, I have long ago received it as the only solution at my command
of their superfluous wear and tear, and worry and flurry, and tears and
nerves and headaches. A fellow may suggest Jane, and obtrude Bridget,
and hire Peggy, and run in debt for Mehetable, and offer to take the
baby on 'Change with him, but has he by a feather's weight lightened
Madam's mysterious burden? My dear sir, don't presume to expect it. She
has just as much to do as she ever had. In fact, she has a little more.
"Strange, you don't appreciate it! Follow her about one day, and see for
yourself!"
What I started to say, however, was that I thought it over often,--I
mean about that invoice of Irishwomen,--coming home from the office at
night, while we were moving out of Artichoke Street into Nemo's Avenue.
It is not pleasant to find one's wife always sitting on a bandbox. I
have seen her crawl to her feet when she heard me coming, and hold on by
a chair, and try her poor little best to look as if she could stand
twenty-four hours longer; she so disliked that I should find a "used-up
looking house" under any circumstances. But I believe that was worse
than the bandbox.
On this particular night she was too tired even to crawl. I found her
all in a heap in the corner, two dusters and a wash-cloth in one
blue-veined hand, and a broom in the other; an old corn-colored silk
handkerchief knotted over her hair,--her hair is black, and the effect
was good,--and her little brown calico apron-string literally tied to
the baby, who was shrieking at the end of his tether because he could
just not reach the kitten and throw her into the fire. On Alison's lap,
between a pile of shirts and two piles of magazines, lay a freshly
opened letter. I noticed that she put it into her pocket before she
dropped her dusters and stood up to lift her face for my kiss. She
forgot about the apron-strings, and the baby tipped up the wrong way,
and hung dangling in mid-air.
After we had taken tea,--that is to say, after we had drawn around the
ironing-board put on two chairs in the front entry, made the cocoa in a
tin dipper, stirred it with a fork, and cut the bread with a
jack-knife,--after the baby was fairly off to bed in a champagne-basket,
and Tip disposed of, his mother only knew where, we coaxed a consumptive
fire into the parlor grate, and sat down before it in the carpetless,
pictureless, curtainless, blank, bare, soapy room.
"Thank fortune, this is the last night of it!" I growled, putting my
booted feet against the wall, (my slippers had gone over to the avenue
in a water-pail that morning,) and tipping my chair back drearily,--my
wife "_so_ objects" to the habit!
Allis made no reply, but sat looking thoughtfully, and with a slightly
perplexed and displeased air, into the sizzling wet wood that snapped
and flared and smoked and hissed and blackened, and did everything but
burn.
"I really don't know what to do about it," she broke silence at last.
"I'm inclined to think there's nothing better to do than to look at it."
"No; not the fire. O, I forgot--I haven't shown it to you."
She drew from her pocket the letter which I had noticed in the
afternoon, and laid it upon my knee. With my hands in my pockets--the
room was too cold to take them out--I read:--