“Then,” said the old farmer, “I guess he knows what you’ll do in t’other case. You can work, I reckon. I hain’t got much to do, but you can do it, at whatever prices is goin’, an’ that’ll help you get work of other folks; nobody can say I get stuck on the men I hire. So they’re generally glad enough to hire ’em themselves.”
Tappelmine did not seem overjoyed at his prospects, but he had the grace to say that they were better than he had expected. Father Baguss went home, feeling but little more comfortable than when he had started on his well-intended mission. Tappelmine sauntered into his own cabin, wondering how much of the promised seed-corn and wheat he could smuggle into town and trade for whiskey; but he was rather surprised to have his wife, a short, thin, sallow, uninteresting-looking woman, who had been listening at the broken window, approach him, throw her arms about his neck, and exclaim,
“Now, old man, we can be respectable, can’t we? The chance has been a long time a-comin’, but we’ve got it now.”
The surprise was too great for Tappelmine, and he spent the remainder of the day in nursing his knee on the single hearthstone of his mansion. He was not undisturbed, however, and as men of his mental caliber hate persistent reason even worse than they do work, Mrs. Tappelmine not only coaxed her lord into resolving to be respectable, but allowed that gentleman to persuade himself that he had formed the resolution of his own accord.
CHAPTER XIII.
A PHENOMENON IN EMBRYO.
The superintendency of the Mississippi Valley Woolen Mills was a position which exactly suited Fred Macdonald, and it gave him occasion for the expenditure of whatever superfluous energy he found himself possessed of, yet it did not engross his entire attention. The faculty which the busiest of young men have for finding time in which to present themselves, well clothed and unbusiness-like, to at least one young woman, is as remarkable and admirable as it is inexplicable. The evenings which did not find Fred in Parson Wedgewell’s parlor were few indeed, and if, when he was with Esther, he did not talk quite as sentimentally as he had done in the earlier days of his engagement, and if he talked business very frequently, the change did not seem distasteful to the lady herself. For the business of which he talked was, in the main, of a sort which loving women have for ages recognized as the inevitable, and to which they have subjected themselves with a unanimity which deserves the gratitude of all humanity. Fred talked of a cottage which he might enter without first knocking at the door, and of a partnership which should be unlimited; if he learned, in the course of successive conversations, that even in partnerships of the most extreme order many compromises are absolutely necessary, the lesson was one which improved his character in the ratio in which it abased his pride. The cottage grew as rapidly as the mill, and on his returns from various trips for machinery there came with Fred’s freight certain packages which prevented their owner from appearing so completely the absorbed business man which he flattered himself that he seemed. Then the partnership was formed one evening in Parson Wedgewell’s own church, in the presence of a host of witnesses, Fred appearing as self-satisfied and radiant as the gainer in such transactions always does, while Esther’s noble face and drooping eyes showed beyond doubt who it was that was the giver.
As the weeks succeeded each other after the wedding, however, no acquaintance of the couple could wonder whether the gainer or the giver was the happier. Fred improved rapidly, as the school-boy improves; but Esther’s graces were already of mature growth, and rejoiced in their opportunity for development. Though she could not have explained how it happened, she could not but notice that maidens regarded her wonderingly, wives contemplated her wistfully, frowns departed and smiles appeared when she approached people who were usually considered prosaic. Yet shadows sometimes stole over her face, when she looked at certain of her old acquaintances, and the cause thereof soon took a development which was anything but pleasing to her husband.
“Fred,” said Esther one evening, “it makes me real unhappy sometimes to think of the good wives there are who are not as happy as I am. I think of Mrs. Moshier and Mrs. Crayme, and the only reason that I can see is, their husbands drink.”