A lady and her husband

by Amber Reeves Blanco White

"I don't suppose, poor little thing, that she thought about it!"

James was annoyed. It seemed to him that for Mary after what he had said, to call Florrie a poor little thing was to display a wilful, provocative obstinacy. But he had determined not to give way to irritation, so he said nothing. After all, these lying impostors were new to Mary.

Mary, meanwhile, thinking the matter over, had resolved to make one more effort. She too got up, as these things are more easily said when one is standing, and went over to him. "Will you do one thing for me," she asked, "will you, before you take action, consult Trent, and let me, if I want to, tell him what I feel about it? I'm almost sure, though I don't know why, that he will agree with me."

James paused. Then he took her hands. "Yes," he said, "I'll do that, if you'd like me to. But look here, little woman, you put it to yourself fairly. Have you, even for a minute, tried to look at this thing from my point of view?"

Mary looked down at the floor for an instant's reflection. What he said was perfectly true. She had made no attempt to consider his position. Then she looked up and met his eyes. "No," she admitted, "I haven't."

He said no more, but kissed her and left her to think it over.

It did not occur to him that his leaving her would annoy Mary. He had acted instinctively upon the principle of making the most of an advantage. Moreover, he was tired, he had had a long day's work, and he had not expected to find an argument of such gravity awaiting his return.

Mary, unfortunately, was annoyed. She had not finished telling James about her adventures, and it hurt her to feel that he took no interest in what she had been doing. He would have taken all the interest she could wish if she had made them into a funny story; he liked what he called her witty way of commenting on events, but as it was true and important and serious he only considered its possible effect upon his business.

She tried to conquer her displeasure by telling herself that this was very natural. If a man has worked hard at a business for thirty years one should not be astonished that it has dominated his mind—one should be grateful if he has any mind left to be dominated.

Mary set herself to consider this, so that she might turn from her sense of personal grievance. What would she feel if she had spent the years of her working life serving, not individual people, whose happiness was a simple and obvious end, but an elaborate machine? In James's case the use of the machine was easy to see, people must be fed, and in some ways James fed them better than they had ever been fed before. But that, and he would have admitted it, wasn't the reason why he fed them. He had provided tea-shops because he saw in them the chance of a business opening. Other business men jumped just as eagerly at a chance to make cotton blankets and paper boots, even the tea-shops encouraged women to gad about and spend money instead of making their jams and jellies at home.