“I don’t believe I could have loved my own mamma better than I do you,” he said; “why can’t I work for you as a son would do?”
But Alice shook her head. Not while they could keep body and soul together in any other way, she said, and perhaps she judged rightly as to what was best for herself, though Louis’ suggestion might have been best for him. But one cannot receive benefits involving money—or often confer them—under our present social system, without certain moral deterioration; it will be different when the next development of the kingdom has made it impossible to look upon one’s own things without looking also on the things of others.
Louis did not know, however, of the one Tantalus-drop in Alice’s cup. Henry Randolph, upon leaving home, had been careful to inform her of a very liberal sum of money which lay in bank subject to her order. She had told her husband of it; for it was very bitter to her to be obliged to conceal from him even a thought; and—he had left her at liberty to do as she would.
“A useless wretch like me,” he had said, “unable to take care of his own family, has no right to quarrel with the hand that saves them from starvation. Only—don’t tell me, Alice, which loaf of bread is bought with that money, for I think a crumb of it would choke me.”
“I will never touch a penny of it, Fred, until it is a question of starvation,” she had answered quietly. Then he had kissed her, and called her his good little wife, but no power on earth could have kept him in the house that day, though the March wind was keen to the dividing asunder of bone and marrow, and the rain heavy enough to drown a cuttle-fish.
So the consequence had been a sharp attack of rheumatism, from which he was only beginning to recover. And it was only human that, in the first glow of convalescence, he should feel aggrieved at having his social impulses curbed by a pecuniary bridle. For, indeed, never having in his life felt the sting of genuine poortith cauld, it was always difficult for Dr. Richards to remember that five dollars are only equal, after all, to five hundred cents; and that, while actually having nothing, a man cannot, in our present stage of development, virtually possess all things.
The Sunday dinner was a perfect success, Louis having spurred on Miss Sally to the concocting of a new, and, as she called it, “researchy,” bill of fare.
“And if they could have had just the same at ‘Prices’ they’ll never know it,” Louis had said to the giver of the feast; “for they’ve never had just these dishes there yet, and in all probability never will, all at the same time; so you see it will be the same to them as if you had cooked it all yourself.”
“And a good deal better to me,” said Alice, laughing.
The guests were in fine spirits and appetite, and cleared their plates in royal style, Father McClosky averring that preaching was a mighty fine thing for the appetite, av it was bad intirely for the pocketbook.