“But I’ve just got settled down,” I insisted. “I have no money saved. I have just married. Is there no other remedy?”
“None,” he replied, “I am sorry to say. You will have to do as I prescribe or lose your voice altogether. It is very serious.”
Late that afternoon I appeared before my wife. She had been planting some old-fashioned flowers in the garden. She saw by my downcast countenance that I had bad news.
“What has he told you?” she enquired. “Don’t quibble with me, please!”
“We’ll have to say good-bye to this place,” I began, miserably. “It’s all at an end: this fine dream!”
“Have to leave?” she echoed, faintly. “Is that it?”
Then I reported to her what the specialist had told me.
“And we’ve planted the garden!” I concluded. “We shan’t be able to stay here long enough to reap it!”
There followed some moments of silence, during which the full shock of the news had time to hurt her, and then she proved herself to be one in that sisterhood of wives who in proposing a comfortable escape from a domestic difficulty bravely commit themselves to hardships: for she said, with a smile,
“There, now, this will give you a chance to get to college!”