“Perhaps you had better,” he said. “I am sure I should be glad to.”
“Yes, I dare say!” said Lillie; “that is all you care for me. Now there is Dick Follingsbee, he would be taking care of his wife. Why, he has failed three or four times, and always come out richer than he was before!”
“He is a swindler and a rascal!” said John; “that is what he is.”
“I don’t care if he is,” said Lillie, sobbing. “His wife has good times, and goes into the very first society in New York. People don’t care, so long as you are rich, what you do. Well, I am sure I can’t do any thing about it. I don’t know how to live without money,—that’s a fact! and I can’t learn. I suppose you would be glad to see me rubbing around in old calico dresses, wouldn’t you? and keeping only one girl, and going into the kitchen, like Miss Dotty Peabody? I think I see myself! And all just for one of your Quixotic notions, when you might just as well keep all your money as not. That is what it is to marry a reformer! I never have had any peace of my life on account of your conscience, always something or other turning up that you can’t act like anybody else. I should think, at least, you might have contrived to settle this place on me and poor little Lillie, that we might have a house to put our heads in.”
“Lillie, Lillie,” said John, “this is too much! Don’t you think that I suffer at all?”
“I don’t see that you do,” said Lillie, sobbing. “I dare say you are glad of it; it is just like you. Oh, dear, I wish I had never been married!”
“I certainly do,” said John, fervently.
“I suppose so. You see, it is nothing to you men; you don’t care any thing about these things. If you can get a musty old corner and your books, you are perfectly satisfied; and you don’t know when things are pretty, and when they are not: and so you can talk grand about your honor and your conscience and all that. I suppose the carriages and horses have got to be sold too?”
“Certainly, Lillie,” said John, hardening his heart and his tone.
“Well, well,” she said, “I wish you would go now and send ma to me. I don’t want to talk about it any more. My head aches as if it would split. Poor ma! She little thought when I married you that it was going to come to this.”