They sat on either side of their hearth looking at one another in unconcealed bewilderment.
"If you cared to let me make out a budget, Osborn," she said suddenly, "I think we could arrange it all better. So much for everything, you know."
"Oh, yes, I know! I know all about it, thanks! If you want to dole out my pocket-money, my dear, I'm off.... I'm completely off it! No, thank you. I'll keep my hands on my own income."
"I only meant—"
"Women never seem satisfied," said Osborn wrathfully.
As he looked at her sitting there, thin and fair and reserved as she never used to be, with the sheen of her glossy hair almost vanished, and all of her pretty insouciance gone, he saw no more the gay girl, the wifely comrade, whom he had married. In her place sat the immemorial hag, the married man's bane, the blood-sucker, the enemy, the asker.
She had taken from him a sum equivalent to twice his weekly tobacco-money.
The sacrifice of all his tobacco would not provide for that red and crumpled baby lying in its fine basket. He took that as a comparison, with no intention of sacrificing his tobacco; but it just gave one the figures involved.
As if feeling through her reserve the gist of his thoughts, she smiled.
"Poor old Osborn!" she said.