“I don’t know that, my dear,” said Jared, softly. “They are an expense certainly, and it does seem hard upon us; but I don’t know, after all, but what ours is the happier home.”
“The man came for the poor-rate to-day,” said Mrs Jared, melting, but still frigid.
“That’s nothing new, my dear,” said Jared; “he’s always coming. Our little ones are healthy and strong and happy.”
“Have you thought about the rent being nearly due?” said Mrs Jared, who would not give in yet.
“Yes,” said Jared; “I have thought about it, for I never get a chance of forgetting it, my dear. It always seems to me that there are eight quarters in poor-people’s years. But, as I was saying about the children, they are happy and merry, and the doctor comes seldom—that is,” he said, with a comical look, “with exceptions, my dear—with exceptions.”
Mrs Jared tried to knit her brows and frown, but she could not, for the corner of a smile would peep out at one angle of her mouth; and, somehow or other, as they sat alone by the fire that night, Jared’s arm crept round his wife’s waist, and her head went down upon his shoulder.
“Plenty,” said Jared, “certainly; but I don’t think you would like to part with any one of them.”
“Oh! how can you!” ejaculated Mrs Jared; and she quite shivered at the thought.
“And I never saw you obliged to make chest-warmers for them because they were delicate, or compelled to get cod-liver oil for them because they were thin and weak, and—”
“Oh! don’t talk so, pray,” exclaimed Mrs Jared. “That poor child! it gives me the heartache to see her, when Ruggles brings her with him. I’d give almost anything to have the poor little thing here for the short time she’s for this world.”