Thereupon Ephraim Jenkins proceeded to give his wife an account of the interview between himself and Warren. It was a garbled account, and it presented the mission he had undertaken in a light which he perfectly well knew was not its real one; but he had an elastic conscience, and was apt to accommodate circumstances to his wife's notions when they differed from his own, rather than to abide by the cold, unyielding, and inconvenient letter of facts. He made out to her that he was to be employed as an agent, not as a substitute; for he had an instinctive consciousness that she would take alarm at the other view of the transaction, and discern the existence of indefinite danger in the very evident trickery which it implied. He did not propose to himself to give so very free a version of the transaction as he found himself led into giving, but the fact was, that when he had concluded what he called an 'account' of the interview from which he had just returned, his wife had only two clear ideas about it--the first that he was going to leave her for he did not exactly know how long, the second that he was going to conduct certain business operations of a kind with which she had no reason at all to believe him practically acquainted. She was not an educated woman, but neither was she ignorant, and it struck her as a most unaccountable imprudence that a man of business should put affairs into the hands of a person who had neither knowledge nor position to bring to the transaction of them.

Ephraim Jenkins perceived at once that his story had not satisfied his wife, and that he must improve upon it if he hoped to serve the first important end to be gained, i.e. her willing acquiescence in their indefinite separation.

'Whatever I shall tell her'--so ran the ingenuous current of his thoughts--'I must not let out that I am going to pass for an independent gentleman, for, of course, she would like to have her share in a game of that kind, and why shouldn't she?'

'I don't understand it plain enough yet, Eph,' she said; and Eph knew the resolute ring in the voice, quite free from temper, but meaning him to mind it. 'You must be more distinct, please. And I should like you to tell me how it is that you and this Warren have turned friends again. I never knew much about your quarrel or how you were mixed up with him at first; but it seems to me, considering he wouldn't answer your letters or see you or help you to get anything to do for some time back, he must have some very strong reason for changing round all of a sudden, and putting you into a thing which must want management and must mean confidence.'

'Ain't she shrewd!' thought Jenkins rather admiringly, though his wife's shrewdness bothered him just then; 'goes straight at it and hits it in the hull's-eye.' And then he formed a resolution.

'You are quite right, Bess,' he replied. 'I am sure his reason is a very strong one, only I don't know it, and it don't matter to me, for I am safe to get paid, and you see that's the chief thing, and I'm sure you'll allow--and there's the queerest tricks going on in business, tricks that would make you stare to hear of and you could hardly believe. If there is any such tricks up in this game, you understand, it's Warren will be playing them, not me, and they don't concern me; and you may take your oath Warren knows what he's about. But I am going to tell you something, Bess, which I have not told you before, just because we have always had enough trouble to get along, and a big share of it has been yours, my girl, and I did not want to make it bigger by giving things a look of greater hardship and blacker injustice than they need have; but I can't go on without telling you now, Bess, when you ask me how it comes that Warren has changed his mind and his hand about me. You know he is not aware of your existence!'

'Yes,' Bess replied anxiously, 'I know you thought it better he should not know you were married.'

'I had my reasons. Long ago, Warren said to me he would never get me another job, or help me with another cent, if I mixed myself up in any affair with a woman. I have no doubt he did not mean by that if I married, for he never thought of such a thing, but he just said that, and he meant it. "He would not have any woman told anything about his affairs," he said, "and I had better act on the caution."

'I did, Bess, you know how, and I have been obliged to stick to it. If I had gone to him and pleaded poor little Ted, instead of softening him, the notion of the poor little crippled baby would only have exasperated him, and he would have told me I was a cursed fool, and might take the consequences. It was only while he believed me to be knocking about alone, and at his beck and call, that I could count on Warren's remembering me sometimes for his own sake; and so I never told him I had a wife, Bess, and I can't tell him now; but I will when this job is through, for I mean to save every cent I can while it is on, and then we will set up in some little way, and I will be steady.'

Poor Bess had heard many such promises already during the two years she had been Ephraim Jenkins's wife, and had tested their worthlessness, but she still cherished the delusion concerning her husband, which, however foolish, is always lovable and excusable in a woman; and therefore she smiled, faintly indeed, for the little tenant had left its cradle empty too lately for the mother's lips to smile in full or genuinely, and said, 'I know you will, Eph; I know you will.'