Her Husband's Purse

by Helen Reimensnyder Martin

It seemed to be another trick of the irony of fate that while everything in Margaret's environment and in her education conduced to make her walk blindly into such a marriage as this with Daniel Leitzel, nothing in her whole life had in the least fitted her for meeting and coping with that which was before her as the wife of such a man as Daniel really was.

She was glad that the form which her lover's proposal of marriage assumed obviated any necessity on her part for salving over her own lack of sentiment.

"Of course, you have surmised ere this, Miss Berkeley—Margaret—that I intended to make you an offer of marriage, to ask you to become—my beloved wife!" he said impressively, and Margaret checked her inclination to beg him not to make it sound too much like a tombstone inscription. "My proposal may seem to you precipitate; I am aware it is unusual to propose on so short a courtship; you perhaps think I ought to keep on paying attentions to you for at least several months longer. But I can spare so little time away from my business. And to court you by correspondence—well, I am certainly too much of a gentleman to send typewritten letters, dictated to my stenographer, to a lady, especially one so refined as you are and one whom I want to make my wife. And to write out letters myself, that's something I have neither time nor inclination for. And something I'm not used to either. So, I thought that while I'm down here on the spot, I might as well stay and conclude the matter. That is why I have been so pressing in my attentions to you—not to lose time, you see, which is money to me and should be to every man. So with as much haste as was consistent with propriety and tact, Miss Berkeley, I've been leading up to this present hour in which I offer you my hand and heart and," he added, his tone becoming sentimental, "my life's devotion."

It sounded for the most part like a lawyer's brief, Margaret thought, as, sitting white and quiet, she listened to him.

"You have given me every reason to think, Miss Berkeley, by your reception of my assiduous attentions, that my suit was agreeable to you and that you would accept me when I asked you to, in spite of the evident opposition of your sister and her husband."

"But they are not opposed to you. Why, what could have made you think so? They have been very kind to you, Mr. Leitzel."

"To me personally, yes; kind and hospitable. But as your suitor? No. Have they not persistently put themselves in the way of my seeing you alone, and thus tried to interfere with my taking from them you and your—taking you from them?" he hastily concluded.

Daniel had been, all through this courtship, strangely, and to himself incomprehensibly, shy about making any inquiries as to Margaret's dowry, though he fairly suffered in the repression of his desire to know what she was "worth." He wondered what it really was that made him tongue-tied whenever he thought of "sounding" her? Perhaps it was that she, on her side, was so persistently reticent not only as to her own property but with regard to his possessions. Never had she even hinted any curiosity as to his income, though he had several times led up to the subject in order to give her the necessary opportunity. The matter would, of course, have to be talked out between them some time. Daniel was all prepared with his own story; he knew just exactly what statements he was going to "hand out" to his future wife and what he was not going to tell. But the strange thing was she didn't seem to feel the least interest in the matter.

When Margaret tried just now to assure him that her relatives' supposed interference with his attentions to her was wholly imaginary, she received her first glimpse of the notorious obstinacy of the little lawyer, and she recognized, with some consternation, that when once an idea had found lodgment in his brain, it was there to stay; no reasoning or proof could dislodge it.

"Since your relatives are opposed to your marrying," he reiterated his conviction at the end of her proofs to the contrary, "I think it would be well if we got married before I returned to New Munich. This would not only save me the expense of another trip South, but would avert any further plotting on the part of your family. I'm afraid to leave the spot," he affirmed, "without taking you with me. Anyway, I can't." His face flushed and he fairly caught his breath as he gazed at her. "I'm thinking of you day and night, every hour, every minute! If I went back without you I couldn't work. I'm just crazy about you!"