“He is a terrible hand at wearing out his clothes,” I said; yet I knew the matter to be pretty well settled.
“Then I can tell Cress, can’t I?” said Cherry. “And now I must go downstairs to see about tea.”
We did not dine late, but there was generally a slice of cold mutton or a chop for my husband at teatime, whether or no the children had had meat at our mid-day meal.
To save trouble, we had breakfast, dinner, and tea in the basement-room, close to the kitchen. Indeed, that was our only second sitting-room. The other ground floor room, behind the front parlour, had to be used for sleeping purposes.
Cherry always laid the table, and she did it in her own peculiarly dainty fashion. The food might be simple, might even be scanty, but the cloth was always white and smooth, and the china spotless.
On that particular day, I remember that we had a large loaf of brown bread, and a little pat of salt butter. Also there was a big plum-cake made by Cherry,—hardly more than dry bread with a few currants, yet the boys liked it.
The said boys had put away their lesson-books, and were clustering round the table. My fair-haired Ted was in his favourite seat, by my side.
I can recall so well my husband’s face as he sat opposite. The ceiling of the basement-room was low, and the light from the one gas-burner fell upon his haggard and furrowed face. He ought not to have been either haggard or furrowed yet, so far as age was concerned. We had been married eighteen years and more; but when our wedding took place Robert was only twenty-two, and I only eighteen.
That early marriage was foolish, of course. Friends told us so at the time, and we have seen it so since plainly enough. If we had been content to wait a few years, and to lay by something first, many an after-hour of heavy anxiety might never have come. But, like most young people, we counted our own way the best, and refused to hear advice. So the burdens of life fell upon us early.
I think they weighed more upon Robert than me. He might, from his look in those days, have been a man of fifty-five instead of only forty. His disposition was naturally more depressed than mine, for I had by nature a fund of high spirits which stood me in good stead, though the fund had become lower than of old. People said, however, that I looked young still,—more like Robert’s daughter than his wife. Fair hair often does not turn grey so soon as dark hair, even under worry; and I was very fair in colouring, as well as slight, and active, and impulsive. Cherry took more after her father than after me; but I do not think she resembled either of us closely.