It makes me faint now to think of that moment. I sat staring at the paper. It amounted to one hundred and fifty dollars more than was in that roll of bills! I felt my hair make an attempt to stand erect. I mechanically opened my purse, and handed them the money that was to have been returned to Edgar, and said in a voice that I did not recognize as my own: "That is all I happen to have with me—I will attend to the other trifle to-morrow."
Trifle!! The remainder was more than I had ever spent for clothes before in a year. It never occurred to me that I could countermand the order. I felt that I was helpless and in the hands of the Philistines. I gave them my address, fully determined to get back to the hotel and smuggle Edgar off before the next morning, before the "trifle" could be asked for.
I kept saying all the way:—"We are just married. We are just married. Men always forgive things when they are just married!" I said it over and over.
When we stopped at the hotel entrance some one opened the door at once. It was Edgar. He was smiling and helping me out, and saying that he had been smoking and waiting for me. I prayed that I might sink right down through the coal-hole in the sidewalk.
I did not speak, and Edgar said, anxiously:—"Your shopping has been too much for you, dear. You look pale and tired out!" I thought of that trifling balance, and nearly staggered. I said, "No, oh no!" and got into our rooms in some way.
To think that I, Helen Braine, who never possessed more than three gowns at once, the wife of a man who had had to wear coats with frayed edges, should have spent a small fortune in two hours, and that there was still a "balance"! And it had yet to be told of! That was the worst. I expected to hear him say every minute:
"By the way, my dear, I made a little mistake this morning, and gave you the wrong amount of money. I knew you would understand it."
Well, when we were inside our rooms, with the door shut, I leaned up against the wall. Edgar saw there was something terrible the matter, and he looked quite pale and said: "What is it?"
I was waiting for him to say: "You haven't spent all the money!" and kept thinking to myself very hard—"Men always forgive things when they are just married."
Finally, I said, "Edgar, how much money have you?" And then he stared at me. He laughed, and said: "How mercenary shopping expeditions do make women!"