“I’m on my way to do the marketing. It’s a terrible nuisance, and I know so little about those things. But it’s coming to be regarded as fashionable for a woman to do her own marketing. Some of the best families—people with their own carriages and servants in livery—some of the swellest ladies in Brooklyn do it now. It’s a fad from across the river.”
“You must be careful not to overtax yourself,” said I.
And I said it quite seriously, for in those days of my innocence I was worried about her, thought her a poor overworked angel, was glad I had the money to relieve her from the worst tasks and to leave her free to amuse herself and to take care of her health! I had not yet started in the direction of ridding myself of the masculine delusion that woman is a delicate creature by nature if she happens to be a lady—and of course I knew my Edna was a lady through and through. It was many a year before I learned the truth—why ladies are always ailing and why they can do nothing but wear fine clothes and sit in parlors or in carriages when they are not sitting at indigestible food, and amuse themselves and pity themselves for being condemned to live with coarse, uninteresting American men.
Yes, I was sincere in urging her to take care how she adopted so laborious a fad as doing her own marketing. She went on:
“If I had a carriage it wouldn’t be so bad.”
She said this sweetly enough and with no suggestion of reproach. Just the sigh of a lady’s soul at the hardness of life’s conditions. But I, loving her, felt as if I were somehow to blame. “You shall have a carriage before many years,” said I. “That’s one of the things I’ve been working for.”
She gave me a look that made me feel proud I had her to live for. “I hope I’ll be here to enjoy it,” sighed she.
I walked sad and silent by her side, profoundly impressed and depressed by that hint as to her feeble health. I know now it was sheer pretense with her, the more easily to manage me and to cover her shortcomings. I ought to have realized it then. But what man does? She certainly did not look ill, for she was not one of those who were always stuffing themselves at teas and lunches, and talked of a walk of five blocks as hard exercise! She had learned how to keep health and beauty. What intelligence it shows, that she was able to grasp so difficult a matter; and what splendid persistence that she was able to carry out a mode of life so disagreeable to self-indulgence. If her intelligence and her persistence could have been turned to use! Presently we were at the butcher shop. I paused in the doorway while she engaged in her arduous labor. Here is the conversation:
“Good morning, Mr. Toomey.” (Very gracious; the lady speaking to the trades person.)
“Good morning, ma’am.” (Fat little butcher touching cracked and broken-nailed hand to hat respectfully.)