“You oughtn’t to give me the money for it now—you really oughtn’t. There are so many calls on you at this season of the year, I don’t see how we can meet them as it is. The second quarter of Josephine’s music lessons begins next month, and the dancing school bill comes in too—besides the coal. Everything just piles in before Christmas. I meant to have saved the money, for a coat at any rate, this summer out of my allowance, but I was obliged to fit Josephine out from head to foot—she grows so fast, she takes as much for a dress as I do. But it doesn’t make any difference—I can do very well for a while with what I have—really!”
“How about the Washington trip with me next month? I thought you said you couldn’t go anywhere without a new suit?”
“Well, I can’t, but—”
“That settles it.”
Mr. Atwood pulled off the rubber band from the pocketbook and laid it on the table before him, as he extracted a roll of bills and began to count them. It was a shabby article, worn brown at the edges, but it had been made of handsome leather to begin with, and still held together in spite of many years of service. Mrs. Atwood would hardly have known her husband without that pocketbook. It represented in its way the heart of a kind and generous man, always ready to do his utmost in help of the family needs, without complaint or caviling.
His wife always experienced mingled feelings when that leather receptacle appeared—a quick and blessed relief and a sharp wince, as if it were really his heart’s blood that she was taking. Her fervent imagination was perennially ready to picture unknown depths of stress.
He paid no attention now to her inarticulate murmur of protest; but asked, in a business-like way,
“How much will it take?”
“I could get the material for a dollar a yard—” Mrs. Atwood sat with her hands clasped and her eyes looking off into space, feeling the words wrung from her—“I could get it for a dollar a yard, but I suppose it ought to be heavier weight for the winter.”
“Have it warm enough, whatever else you do,” interrupted her husband.