“Do you remember, dear, Judge Wylie’s ball given in honor of your return from school? Do you remember that we had just heard of my changed prospects, and that we knew if we should marry we would have to go forth to a life of toil and self-denial—and do you remember that I took this hand into mine with fear and trembling for its destiny as it lay in my broad, brown palm, a tiny snow-white thing, sparkling with diamonds like icicles on snow, a fairy hand—an ideal hand?”
“Yes, I remember you talked a great deal of poetry about my hand, dear Magnus—and I remember that seeing you loved its beauty so much, I made a rash promise to keep it always beautiful for your sake. I could not do it, dear Magnus. It is not so fair and elegant now as it was then,” said Elsie, smiling, and holding it up.
“But, oh! how much dearer! how much more beloved! Then it was an ideal hand—now it is a human hand, a mother’s hand,” he said, taking it again and pressing it to his lips and bosom, and gazing fondly on her. Then, after a little, he spoke again, saying: “Elsie, dearest, there was another promise which you made, but in my name, and which I tacitly indorsed, yet have failed to perform.”
“Well, dear Magnus?”
“Do you remember the dress you wore upon the memorable occasion of that ball? I do perfectly. I do not know the material of which it was made, but it floated around you as you moved—a soft and radiant mist. And when I spoke of it, bemoaning the fate that would change it for a plain garb such as befitted a poor young doctor’s wife—you smiled hopefully, and promised that in ten years, when I should have ‘achieved greatness,’ you would wear a much richer dress, which should still befit my station—and I indorsed the promise; yet ten years have passed, and I have failed to redeem it. My Elsie still wears coarse clothing, and works from morning till night.”
“Your Elsie is happy, dearest Magnus. And the Princess Charlotte herself, the idol lady of all England, could not say any more. Young people, especially where youth is brightened by such sanguine blood as mine, have too many extravagant hopes—make too many rash promises; I say again, your Elsie is happy, dear Magnus, and if she had the world she could not say more.”
He gazed on her in fond admiration for a little while, and then said:
“Elsie, dearest, there is one thing at least in which we did not promise or expect too much—in which we have not failed to keep our promise—to love each other more and more every year we should live.”
She raised her eyes to his, and he read her answer in their loving glance.
“Well, Elsie,” he said, at last, “you are happy; yet it is not now the hope of better days to come that makes you happy—for more than ten years have passed, and I have not laid by a thousand dollars. So you can scarcely expect now that I shall ever make a fortune by my profession.”