The face of the one thus appealed to, which generally bore a care-worn look, relaxed into an attentive and gentle interest. He gave the labored page the appropriate scrutiny. When the right of criticism was thus justly earned, he bestowed due meed of praise. In line after line he read, ECONOMY IS WEALTH.
The children soon left him, and he turned down a path leading to the gate. All the way he repeated in various intonations of voice, the tones changing with various trains of thought, economy is wealth.
He said to himself, "Who was the great inventor of that most absurd of proverbs? Economy is wealth. Nonsense! The man who first spoke that sentence, never had a saving wife. Economy wealth! Pooh! Pooh! I say, economy is poverty.
"Our house is full of economy. The more it becomes a bank full of that article, so ridiculously misrepresented, the more poor I am. We have a great linen-closet, never opened for use, full of economy. We have a garret where economy is packed away. There are things ancient and modern, big and little, shining and rusty, known and unknown, bought as bargains, and patiently waiting under loads of dust to become useful, and to save us several fortunes. There is a huge chest of economy in the entry near the spare room door. It contains plated ware, spoons, urns, tea-pots, toast-racks, branches for candle-sticks, all ready for use some fifty years hence, when we shall give parties to the fashionable people in our village, increased from eight or ten to one hundred.
"And there is the fat boy in the kitchen, who was to save me from the cost of hiring a man to cut my wood, and dig the garden, and who was to wear my old clothes. Now he is so corpulent that he cannot get into my coats or pantaloons. If there be a tide which takes out everything, and brings in nothing, then it is economy. Yes. Economy is wealth."
Now Mrs. Digby was a great domestic statesman. Her husband had been leading a life of married astonishment. There seemed to be no end to the resources of her diplomacy. Her reasons for any departure from her ordinary expenditures, were versatile and profound.
One principle behind which the good lady invariably entrenched herself, was the impregnable one, that she never bought anything unless it was under the promptings of a strict necessity. "I never buy anything not strictly necessary, Mr. Digby," was the oil she poured on the troubled waters of the mind of her husband.
Now the man whose intellect was not able to comprehend the curious principles that regulated his household, declared that he never saw anything so comprehensive as this theory of necessity. It appeared to him to be the only law on the earth or among the stars which had no exceptions. And all these necessities, were a great perplexity under another aspect. They were all matters of life and death. If the coat of the little girl faded in a slight degree, a new one—if Mrs. Digby said so—was so necessary, that it was evident that an earthquake would come, or the sun turn aside from his path, with consequences of unending disaster, unless her will was transformed into actual ribbons, and merino, or silk, or velvet. And what was equally surprising, it sometimes happened, that before one necessity could thus be removed, another arose; and the first was forgotten. The earthquake was somehow prevented. The sun did not alter his course. It was a strange mystery.
It happened after they had been married a short time, that Mrs. Digby expected a visit from some friends.