"You'd better not try to be sarcastic, Mr. Morton. You haven't the brains for it, and it isn't in your line."
"You are complimentary."
"No, I only show a proper discrimination. Heaven knows I have lived with you years enough, and weary ones at that, to understand you thoroughly. Can't you send me up a check from your store? It will be in time if I receive it by eleven o'clock."
"No, I cannot," said Paul Morton, with unusual firmness.
"So you refuse, do you?" exclaimed Mrs. Morton, in deep anger.
"I do; and for a good reason."
"Give me your reason, then. I should like to judge of it myself."
"Then I will tell you without reserve, what I had not intended to mention. In all my mercantile career I was never in such danger of ruin as at the present. The dull times at which you sneer have proved very disastrous to me. It is all I can do to keep my head above water. Every day I fear that the crash will come, and that instead of being able to afford you this establishment, I shall be obliged to remove into some humble dwelling in Brooklyn, and seek for a position as clerk or bookkeeper. How would you fancy this change, madam? Yet it is at such a time you harass me with your unreasonable demands for money. If I am ruined, it will be some satisfaction that you, who have had so much to do with bringing it on, are compelled to suffer its inconveniences with me."
Mrs. Morton turned pale while he was speaking, for she had never known anything of her husband's business affairs, and supposed that such a thing as his failure was impossible. To be reduced to poverty, where a wife loves her husband and is beloved in return, is not so hard; but where there is no pretence of love, and the wife lives only for show, it is felt as a terrible misfortune.