He had grown somewhat calmer, with the calmness of an utter despair, when the door opened, and a girl came in bearing a large basket heavily loaded. She was a slender young creature, not more than seventeen years old, and her pale face and narrow chest betrayed a tendency to consumption. Her complexion was of a clear olive tint; her hair was of a blue-black color, and was worn in braids; her eyes were dark and loving, with an appealing expression in them; and, despite the circumstances of her lot, she maintained a hopeful, sunshiny spirit and a sunshiny countenance.
She was the young music-teacher for whose sake Rufus Black had quarrelled with his father. She was the last member of a large family who had all died of consumption. She had lost her situation in a ladies’ school about the time that Rufus had separated himself from his father; and after the young man had abandoned his parent, he had hastened to her and begged her to marry him. He was full of hope, ambitious, determined to achieve fame and fortune by his painter’s brush, and she was weak and worn, sorrowful and nearly ill, and quite penniless. Believing in his talents and ability to support them both, she had accepted the refuge he offered her, and one week after Craven Black had turned his son adrift, the young pair were married, and moved into their present dingy quarters.
They had joined their poverty together, and soon discovered that the achievement of fame and wealth was uphill work. Rufus was fresh from his university, unused to work for his bread, and he had overrated his talent for painting, as he presently discovered. He found it hard work to sell his poor efforts, and he could not paint enough at first to bring him in twenty shillings a week. It was now three months since his marriage, and one by one his books, his better articles of clothing, his watch, and other trinkets, had been sold or pledged to buy necessaries or pay the rent. Upon this morning they had had no breakfast.
“How big your eyes are, Rufus!” laughed the young wife, throwing off her battered little hat. “You look as if I had brought you some priceless treasure; but you well may, for I have the nicest little breakfast we have had for a week.”
“Where did you get it?” inquired the young artist, his thin cheeks flushing with an eagerness he would have concealed. “Have you prevailed on the grocer to give us credit?”
“No, I could not do that,” and the young wife shook her head. “I’m afraid his heart is as hard as the nether mill-stone we read about. He thinks I’m a humbug—a cheat! But our landlady, Mrs. McKellar, you know, has faith in your picture, and I borrowed two shillings of her. See what a sumptuous repast we shall have,” and she proceeded to display the contents of her basket, unpacking them swiftly. “Here’s two-pence worth of coffee, a pennyworth of milk, a threepenny loaf, and a superb rasher of ham of the kind described by the Irishman as ‘a strake of fat and a strake of lane.’ And here’s a bundle of wood to boil the coffee; and I’ve gone to the extravagance of a sixpenny pot of jam, your appetite is so delicate. And now for breakfast.”
She piled her wood skillfully in the grate, put on her coffee-pot and frying pan, and lighted her fire.
Then while her breakfast was cooking, she laid her table with her scanty ware, and bustled about like an incarnate sunbeam, and no one would have suspected that she too was weak and hungry, and that she was sick at heart and full of dread for the future.
“So breakfast is provided for,” murmured Rufus Black, in a tone in which it would have been hard to tell which predominated, relief or bitterness. “I began to fear we should fast to-day, as we did yesterday.”
The young wife turned her rasher of ham in the pan, and put her small allowance of coffee in the pot, before she answered gravely: