But the dreariness of mind Daniel's attitude caused her she, with a sort of mediæval superstition, almost welcomed as being at least some expiation for the sin of her loveless marriage.
Margaret was disappointed to find, as the days passed over her head, that because of her inability to ride on the cars without great physical distress, she was obliged to postpone the promised visit to her mother-in-law; and at last, when her appearance made the little trip no longer possible, she wrote to Mrs. Leitzel and explained the reason for her not keeping her promise.
"But just as soon as your grandchild is able to travel," she concluded her letter, "I shall bring it (not knowing its gender) out to see you."
It seemed to Margaret that, unaggressive though she was, the weeks before her confinement were constantly marked by contentions, apparently inevitable, between her and Daniel about the many things of life which they viewed from diametrically opposed standpoints. Her monthly account of her expenditures with her ten dollars allowance was one of these points of difference. The first time Daniel asked her to produce the little account book he had given her she took it from her desk, scribbled a few words in it, and cheerfully handed it to him, and he read on one page, "Daniel gave me ten dollars," and on the opposite page, "All spent. Balances exactly."
Daniel looked up from the book inquiringly.
"That's as much of an account as you'll ever get from me, Daniel, as to what I did with ten dollars in a whole month! Did you actually suppose I'd give you the items, like a little school-girl?"
And no amount of persuasion, or of fretting and fuming on his part, could induce her to submit to him an itemized account of her allowance.
Her South Carolina property was another bone of contention.
"I can't get a word from that brother-in-law of yours in reply to my letter to him!" Daniel complained one September evening when they were alone in their bedroom just after supper, Margaret, in a pink silk negligé, lying on a couch at the foot of the bed and Daniel seated in an armchair beside her. "The slipshod business ways of those Southerners! What does the man mean?"
"He's such a procrastinator! I must admit Walter's rather lazy. Clever, though. He's considered a mighty intelligent lawyer."