Many of my readers will wonder, perhaps, why this young couple looked upon beginning housekeeping on Harry’s income as such a tremendous experiment, when so many live and bring up families on much less. But there was no disguising the fact that Harry’s bringing-up in his father’s luxurious house had made him fastidious, and he shrank from the too frugal table that he associated with such means, and, even more, the necessity of foregoing in his own house the refinement he had been accustomed to. This lack being in the house of another person irked him less.
Molly’s dread was mixed with a trembling desire to show her husband what sort of a wife he had married.
“I feel just a doll while boarding, with nothing to think of but my clothes. You don’t know whether I am fit to be a helpmeet or not,” she had often said, and he had replied, “My darling, I take it all on faith; you are too good for me, even if you could not sew on a button.”
But Molly’s trembling did not come from fear of facing life in a cottage. She knew herself, but she did think that Harry might grow to repent the step. She feared also the criticism of his mother, ever watchful for a trip on her part.
Ah! what agony it would be to her, if her husband should ever regret the sacrifice he had made! But from such thoughts as these, that kept her awake far into the night while Harry slept soundly at her side, she would turn to a vision of herself as a triumphant little matron.
“I cannot fail! My time and ingenuity will certainly supply the deficiency of money.”
Molly had kept house for an invalid mother, who, for economy’s sake, had lived in a small French town, and after her mother’s death she had found herself forced to earn her living as governess, for her mother’s income died with her.
Thus, although she had often told Harry she could keep house, he had smiled, pinched her cheek, and told her she did not realize the difference between keeping house in France and doing so in America, with a newly imported Bridget for aide de cuisine, and as Molly did not like to boast, she had to let him keep his own opinion. But oh, how she longed to show him what unknown resources lay within her! And now the chance was hers.
After the first joyful hour, she behaved very soberly. She would take as a matter of course all Harry’s misgivings as to the commissariat department, for I am sorry to say Harry Bishop, although a Harvard graduate, and a fairly intellectual young man, did think a great deal of the enjoyment of life consisted in a good table, by which he meant not good food only, but good cooking and dainty service, and how they were to have this on $100 per month he could not see, unless his income were all spent for servants and food. When he told this to Molly she said:
“No, I propose that we keep house, and spend exactly what we do for this one room and our board; that is, $80 per month. It must be divided in this way: $20 for rent (we must never go beyond that), $12 for servant, and $10 a week for housekeeping; that is, $77 a month. The three remaining dollars, with the four or five we now spend for car fare, will buy your commutation ticket.”