While he was putting on his greatcoat in the hall, the butler assisting him, the ancient female servant came to him again. There was a look about her face which told of war, and declared her to be, if not the chief lieutenant of his wife, at any rate her colour-serjeant. Martha Biggs no doubt was chief lieutenant. "Missus desires me to ask," said she, with her grim face and austere voice, "whether you will be pleased to dine at home to-day?" And yet the grim, austere woman could be affectionate and almost motherly in her ministrations to him when things were going well, and had eaten his salt and broken his bread for more than twenty years. All this was very hard! "Because," continued the woman, "missus says she thinks she shall be out this evening herself."
"Where is she going?"
"Missus didn't tell me, sir."
He almost determined to go up stairs and call upon her to tell him what she was going to do, but he remembered that if he did it would surely make a row in the house. Miss Biggs would put her head out of some adjacent door and scream, "Oh laws!" and he would have to descend his own stairs with the consciousness that all his household were regarding him as a brute. So he gave up that project. "No," he said, "I shall not dine at home;" and then he went his way.
"Missus is very aggravating," said the butler, as soon as the door was closed.
"You don't know what cause she has, Spooner," said the housekeeper very solemnly.
"Is it at his age? I believe it's all nonsense, I do;—feminine fancies, and vagaries of the weaker sex."
"Yes, I dare say; that's what you men always say. But if he don't look out he'll find missus'll be too much for him. What'd he do if she were to go away from him?"
"Do?—why live twice as jolly. It would only be the first rumpus of the thing."
I am afraid that there was some truth in what Spooner said. It is the first rumpus of the thing, or rather the fear of that, which keeps together many a couple.