"You work hard enough as it is, Virginia. You've been awfully good about it," he answered, but his manner was almost casual, for he had grown to take for granted her unselfishness with something of the unconcern with which he took for granted the comfortable feeling of the spring weather. In the early days of their marriage, when her fresh beauty had been a power to rule him, she had taught him to assume his right to her self-immolation on the altar of his comfort; and with the taste of bitterness which sometimes follows the sweets of memory, she recalled that their first quarrel had arisen because she had insisted on getting out of bed to make the fires in the morning. Then, partly because the recollection appeared to reproach him, and partly because, not possessing the critical faculty, she had never learned to acknowledge the existence of a flaw in a person she loved, she edged closer to him, and replied cheerfully:
"I don't mind the work a bit, if only the children will keep well so we shan't have to spend any more money. I shan't need any black clothes," she added, with a trembling lip. "Mrs. Carrington has given me this dress, as she has gone out of mourning, and I've got a piece of blue silk put away that I am going to have dyed."
He glanced at the shapeless dress, not indignantly as he would once have done, but with a tinge of quiet amusement.
"It makes you look every day of forty."
"I know it isn't becoming, but at least it will save having to buy one."
In spite of the fact that her small economies had made it possible for them to live wholesomely, and with at least an appearance of decency, on his meagre salary, they had always aroused in him a sense of bitter exasperation. He respected her, of course, for her saving, yet in his heart he knew that she would probably have charmed him more had she been a spendthrift—since the little virtues are sometimes more deadly to the passion of love than are the large vices. While he nodded, without disputing the sound common sense in her words, she thought a little wistfully how nice it would be to have pretty things if only one could afford them. Someday, when the children's schooling was over and Oliver had got a larger salary, she would begin to buy clothes that were becoming rather than durable. But that was in the future, and, meanwhile, how much better it was to grudge every penny she spent on herself as long as there were unpaid bills at the doctor's and the grocer's. All of which was, of course, perfectly reasonable, and like other women who have had a narrow experience of life, she cherished the delusion that a man's love, as well as his philosophy, is necessarily rooted in reason.
When they turned homeward, the bay mare, pricked by desire for her stable, began to travel more rapidly, and the fall of her hoofs, accompanied by the light roll of the wheels, broke the silence which had almost imperceptibly settled upon them. Not until the cart drew up at the gate did Virginia realize that they had hardly spoken a dozen words on the drive back.
"I feel better already, Oliver," she said, gratefully, as he helped her to alight. Then hastening ahead of him, she ran up the walk and into the hall, where her mother, looking wan and unnatural in her widow's cap, greeted her with the question:
"Did you have a pleasant drive, dear?"