She would throw in her two mites if she did but know where to find them.
“I could only do it, in truth,” she said to herself, as she rose from her prayers, “by throwing in him. I have got one very great treasure, but I have not got anything else that I care about. After all, it isn’t so easy to be a widow with two mites.”
Then she sat down and thought about it. As to postponing her marriage, that she knew to be in truth quite out of the question. Even if she could bring herself to do it, everybody about her would say that she was mad, and Mr. Frederic F. Frew might not impossibly destroy himself with one of those pretty revolvers which he sometimes brought out from Liverpool for her to play with. But was it not practicable for her to give up her wedding-clothes? There would be considerable difficulty even in this. As to their having been ordered, that might be overcome by the sacrifice of some portion of the price. But then her aunt, and even her uncle, would oppose her; her cousins would cover her with ridicule; in the latter she might, however, achieve something of her widowhood;—and, after all, the loss would fall more upon F. F. Frew than upon herself. She really did not care for herself, in what clothes she was married, so that she was made his wife. But as regarded him, might it not be disagreeable to him to stand before the altar with a dowdy creature in an old gown? And then there was one other consideration. Would it not seem that she was throwing in her two mites publicly, before the eyes of all men, as a Pharisee might do it? Would there not be an ostentation in her widowhood? But as she continued to reflect, she cast this last thought behind her. It might be so said of her, but if such saying were untrue, if the offering were made in a widow’s spirit, and not in the spirit of a Pharisee, would it not be cowardly to regard what men might say? Such false accusation would make some part of the two mites.
“I’ll go into Liverpool about it on Monday,” she said to herself as she finally tucked the clothes around her.
Early in the following morning she was up and out of her room, with a view of seeing her aunt before she came down to breakfast; but the first person she met was her uncle. He accosted her in one of the passages.
“What, Nora, this is early for you! Are you going to have a morning lovers’ walk with Frederic Franklin?”
“Frederic Franklin, as you choose to call him, uncle,” said Nora, “never comes out of his room much before breakfast time. And it’s raining hard.”
“Such a lover as he is ought not to mind rain.”
“But I should mind it, very much. But, uncle, I want to speak to you, very seriously. I have been making up my mind about something.”
“There’s nothing wrong; is there, my dear?”