“Couldn’t you get her plain sewing? Is she handy with her needle?”
“She has tried that, but it brings on a pain in her side, and cough; and the doctor has told her it will not do for her to confine herself.”
“How is her handwriting? Does she write a good hand?”
“Only passable.”
“Because,” said I, “I was thinking if I could get Steele and Simpson to give her law papers to copy.”
“They have more copyists than they need now; and, in fact, this woman does not write the sort of hand at all that would enable her to get on as a copyist.”
“Well,” said I, turning uneasily in my chair, and at last hitting on a bright masculine expedient, “I’ll tell you what must be done. She must get married.”
“My dear,” said my wife, “marrying for a living is the very hardest way a woman can take to get it. Even marrying for love often turns out badly enough. Witness poor Jane.”
Jane was one of the large number of people whom it seemed my wife’s fortune to carry through life on her back. She was a pretty, smiling, pleasing daughter of Erin, who had been in our family originally as nursery-maid. I had been greatly pleased in watching a little idyllic affair 234 growing up between her and a joyous, good-natured young Irishman, to whom at last we married her. Mike soon after, however, took to drinking and unsteady courses; and the result has been to Jane only a yearly baby, with poor health and no money.
“In fact,” said my wife, “if Jane had only kept single, she could have made her own way well enough, and might have now been in good health and had a pretty sum in the savings bank. As it is, I must carry not only her, but her three children, on my back.”