"But how will the girls, Sarah and Jeannie, fancy being sent off so?" inquired Mr. Hunt.
"Oh, as to that, it is late in the day for my children to dispute what I say shall be done; and Sarah's jest that odd that she'll like this notion twenty times better than going to Newport or Saratoga. I know her! As to Jeannie, she is satisfied to be with her sister anywhere. She is getting thin, too; she looks real peaked, and there's nothing in creation so good for ailing children as the salt-water bath. They have first-rate still-water bathing not a quarter of a mile from sister's. It's jest the thing, I tell you! The wonder is it never came into my head before."
Mr. Hunt had his sigh now. "Somehow or other he was always down in the mouth when the family broke up for the summer," his wife frequently complained, and his lack of sympathy now excited her just ire.
"Upon my word, Mr. H.! anybody would think that I was the poorest wife in the world to you to see and hear you whenever I talk to you of my plans and household affairs. You look as if you was about to be hanged, instead of feeling obliged to me for turning, and twisting, and contriving, and studying, day and night, how to save your money, and spend what we must lay out to the best advantage. I can tell you what—there's few women would make your income go as far as I do."
"I know that, my dear. The question is"—Mr. Hunt paused, cleared his throat and strained his nerves for a mighty effort, an unprecedented exercise of moral courage—"the question is, Betsy, whether our income is stretched in the right direction!" Mistaking the stare of petrified incredulity he received for fixed attention, the infatuated man went on: "This doubt is always forced upon me when we separate in July, some to go to one place, some to another, a broken, wandering family for months together. I am growing old, and I love to have my children about me; I begin to feel the want of a home. There is Johnson, in the —— Bank, gets five hundred less per annum than I do; yet, after living quietly here a few years, he bought himself a snug cottage up the river, and has his family there in their own house, everything handsome and comfortable about them. I have been in the harness for a long while; I expect to die in it. I don't mind work—hard work! but it seems to me sometimes that we would all be better satisfied if we had more to show, or to hold, for our money; if there were less of this straining after appearances, this constant study to make both ends meet."
"And it has come to this!" Mrs. Hunt sank into a chair and began to cry. "This is my thanks for slaving and toiling for better than twenty years to get you and your children a stand in the world! It isn't for myself that I care. I can work my fingers to the bone, and live upon a crust! I can scrape and save five dollars or so a month! I can bury myself in the country! But your children! those dear, sweet girls, that have had the best education money can buy, and that to-day visit such people as the Murrays, and Sandersons, and Hoopers, and Baylors, and meet the Castors and Crinnalls at parties—millionaires, all of 'em, the cream of the upper crust! I don't deny that I have been ambitious for them, and I did hope that you had something of the same spirit; and now to think of your complaining, and moping, and groaning over the money you say I've been and wasted; oh! oh! oh!"
"You misunderstand me, my dear; I merely questioned whether we were acting wisely in making so much display upon so little substance. We are not millionaires, whatever may be said of the girls' visiting acquaintances, and I tremble sometimes to think how all this false show may end."
Mr. Hunt's borrowed courage had not evaporated entirely.
"That's distrusting Providence, Mr. H.! It's downright sinful, and what I shouldn't have looked for from you. I can tell you how it will end. If both of us live ten years longer, you will see your daughters riding in their own carriages, and leaders of the tong, and your sons among the first gentlemen of the city. If this does not turn out true, you needn't ever trust my word again. I've set my head upon getting Lucy off my hands this summer, and well off; and mark my words, Mr. H., it shall be done."
One part of her mother's prophecy was fulfilled in Sarah's manner of receiving the proposition so nearly affecting her comfort during the summer. Lucy wondered at the cheerful alacrity with which she consented to be "hidden away in that horrid bore of a farmhouse," and Jeannie cried as her elder sister "supposed that they would eat in Aunt Sarah's kitchen, along with the servant men."