Another surprise for the husband! At first she used to speak to him as “Ralph,” or “dear”; then as “Mr. Charlton”; then as “Sir”; and now it was plain “Charlton.” What did it portend?
The lady held out her hand, as if to receive the papers.
“Pooh!” said the husband, striking it away. “Go and attend to your housework. What a shrill noise your canary is making! That bird must be sold. There was a charge of seventy-five cents for canary-seed in my last grocer’s bill! It’s atrocious. The creature is eating us out of house and home. Bird and cage would bring, at least, five dollars.”
“The letter,—do you choose to give it back?”
“If, after reading it, I think proper to send it to its address, it shall be sent. Give yourself no further concern about it.”
Mrs. Charlton advanced with folded arms, looked him unblenchingly in the face, and gasped forth, with a husky, half-chocked utterance, “Beware!”
“Truly, madam,” said the astonished husband, “this is a new character for you to appear in, and one for which I am not prepared.”
“It is for that reason I say, Beware! Beware when the tame, the submissive, the uncomplaining woman is roused at last. Will you give me that letter?”
“Go to the Devil!”
Mrs. Charlton threw out her hand and clutched at the manuscript, but her husband had anticipated the attempt. As she closed with him in the effort to recover the paper, he threw her off so forcibly that she fell and struck her head against one of the protuberant claws of the legs of her writing-table.