"You prefer small, remote places, and their way of life; you know you do. They are more of a change from town. You bought the house at Newport for our sakes. I have often feared you were sacrificing yourself to us—with your usual disinterestedness, dear."
"Well, my usual disinterestedness is ready to be worked again, to any reasonable extent, if you will say what you're after. But how can I leave the business now?"
"O, the business!" (It was Jane this time.) "That is all very fine, when you don't want to leave town. But I notice that the business never interferes with any of your junketings. What are your clerks paid for? Can't they attend to the business?"
"A fine idea you women have of business, and a fine success you'd make of it. Jane, suppose you take charge in Water Street while I am away."
"I don't doubt I could do it quite as well as you, after a little practice. Why, brother, Mr. Pipeline understands it a great deal better than you do. Our father, in his later years, trusted him entirely."
"Yes, Robert," said Mabel, "and how often you have assured me that Mr. Pipeline was absolutely competent and reliable. When we were married, and a hundred times since, you explained your carelessness and indifference about the business by saying that all was right while old Mr. Pipeline was there: he knew everything, and kept the whole force to their work. It was that, you said, which enabled you to be so much more about the house than most men could be, and so attentive and satisfactory as a husband and father."
She had me there: who would expect a woman to remember things and bring them up in this way, so long after? So I tried to turn it off.
"O, well, he hasn't gone to Canada yet: the books seem straight, and the returns are pretty fair. But it is well for the head of the firm to look in occasionally, all the same."
"You do look in occasionally, Robert: no one can accuse you of neglecting that duty. Would I have married a man who neglected duty, and allowed his business to go to ruin, and his family to come to want? Your conscience may rest perfectly easy on that score, dear."
"O, thank you: it does. I've not often allowed the state of the oil market to interfere with sleep or appetite, or with my appreciation of you and the children. Family duties first, my dear; what so sacred, so primary, as the ties of Home? But such virtue is not always duly prized there. I'm glad you do me justice."