“O Charlie! as if your love didn’t pay me a thousand times over!” she exclaimed, lifting to his eyes dewy with mingled emotions—love, joy, and gratitude.
He answered with a tender caress and a smile of ineffable affection.
“And then you have been so generous with money, too,” Mildred went on. “Why, I never was so rich before in all my life! I’ve not spent a fourth part of the hundred dollars I found in my purse the day after our wedding. And mother tells me you have insisted upon paying a good deal more for our board than she thinks it worth.”
“Ah, dearest, circumstances alter cases, and with more knowledge you and mother may change your minds,” he replied, half absently.
Then after a moment’s silence, “This is my gift to my dear wife, and I cannot tell her how glad I am to be able to make it. My darling, will you accept it at your husband’s hands?”
He had laid a folded paper in her lap.
“Thank you,” she said playfully, and with a pleased smile. “I can’t imagine what it is,” opening and glancing over it as she spoke. “Why!” half breathlessly, as she scrutinized it with more care, then let it fall into her lap with an astonished, half-incredulous look up into his face, “Charlie, is it real?” she asked.
“Entirely so, dear Milly,” he answered, with a tender smile.
“You have endowed me with all your worldly goods,” she said, half in assertion, half inquiringly.
“No, my darling, not nearly half as yet. I know you thought you were marrying a poor man—at least comparatively so—but it was a mistake. And oh the delight of being able to give you ease and luxury! you who have toiled so long and faithfully for yourself and others!”