Little Stories of Married Life

by Mary Stewart Cutting

Mrs. Atwood adored her husband and her three children. She firmly believed them to be superior in every way to all other mortals; sacrificing service for them was her joy of joys, her keenest affliction the fear that she did not appreciate them half enough. It is certain that the children, truthful, loving, and obedient as they had been trained to be, would have been spoiled beyond tolerance if it were not that the very strength of her admiration made it innocuous. They were so used to being told that they were the loveliest and dearest things on earth that the words were not even heard. As they grew older the extravagance of her devotion was beginning to rouse the protective element in them, to her wonder and humility.

Mrs. Atwood, at twenty, the time of her marriage, had been a warm-hearted, fervent, loquacious, impulsive child. At thirty-eight she was still in many ways the girl her husband had married; even to her looks, while he appeared much older than his real age, in reality but a couple of years ahead of hers. She was always longing to be a silent, noble, and finely-balanced character, quite oblivious of the fact that she suited him, a humorous but self-contained man, exactly as she was, and that he would have been very lonesome with anything more perfect. Perhaps, after all, there are few things that are better to bring into a household than an uncalculating and abounding love, even if the manifestations of it are not always of the wisest.

The extra money cast a rich glow over Mrs. Atwood’s horizon. In the effulgence of it she received a bill for twelve dollars presented to her just after breakfast the next morning, by the waitress, with the word that the man waiting outside the door had already brought it once before, when they were out of town. Could Mrs. Atwood pay it now? He needed the money.

“Why, certainly,” said Mrs. Atwood with affluent promptness. The bill was for work on the lawn during the summer, something her husband always paid for, but it seemed a pity to have the man go away again when the money was there at hand. She would not in the least mind asking Edward to refund it to her. But she felt the well-known drop into her usual condition of calculating economy.

Her husband came home that night with a bad headache, and the night after she had another bill waiting for him for repairs on the furnace. It was unexpectedly and villainously large, and Mrs. Atwood was constitutionally incapable of adding another straw to his burden, while she stood by consenting sympathetically unto his righteous wrath. A day later, when she spoke of going to town to buy the material for her new costume with outward buoyancy, but inward panic at the rapid shrinkage of her funds, Sam, a boy of twelve, announced the fact that he must have a new suit of clothes at once. As it was Saturday, he could accompany her.

“What is the matter with those you have on? They are not in the least worn out,” said his mother.

“Mamma, they’re so thin that I’m freezing all the time I’m in school. You ought to have heard me coughing yesterday.”

“You have the old blue suit; I’m sure that’s thick enough.”

“The blue suit! Yes, and it hurts me, it’s so tight I can hardly walk in it. I can’t sit down in it at all. It makes ridges all around my legs.”

Mrs. Atwood looked at her son with rare exasperation. It was well known that when Sam took a dislike to his clothes for any reason, they always hurt him. His coats, his trousers, his caps, his shoes, even his neckties developed hitherto unsuspected attributes of torture. And there was always a haunting feeling with the outraged dispenser of these articles that it might be true. A penetrative and scornful remark from the passing Josephine at once emphasized this view of the case to the anxious mother, remorseful already at her own lack of sympathy.