“Here is the half year’s dividend of your wife’s little money; it’s just come due,” said Aunt Connor, “and here, Milly, dear, is your aunt’s wedding-present to you. Now you can have your will, you see, without breaking in upon your tiny bit of fortune. See what it is to have thoughtful friends.”
For in my envelope there was exactly the sum I wished for—ten pounds.
And what do you suppose I did? Harry standing there as sulky as a statue, looking as if he would like to tear up his share and throw it into the fire. I was so delighted I ran and threw my arms round her neck, and kissed Aunt Connor. I hugged her quite heartily. I did not understand five hundred pounds; but I knew I could get something nice for Harry, and a new dress and a wedding bonnet, with orange-blossoms, out of what she gave me. And she cried, too, and kissed me as if I had been her own child; and it was no hypocrisy, whatever you may think. Harry snatched me away, and quite turned me out of the room to get my bonnet. He looked the sulkiest, most horrid fellow imaginable. I almost could have made faces at him as he sent me away; it was our first real quarrel; but I can’t say I was very much afraid.
When we got out of doors he was quite in a passion with poor Aunt Connor. “Kind! what do you mean by kind? why, you’ve been living on your own money. I am sure she has not spent more on you, besides making you her servant,” cried Harry. “And to take her present! and kiss her—pah! I would not do it for a hundred pounds.”
“Nobody asked you, sir,” said I: “but come this way, please Harry, I want to look at one shop-window—just one. I saw something there yesterday that would just do for me; and now I can afford to buy a dress.”
“By Jove!” cried Harry, “what creatures you women are; here we are, on as good as our wedding-day, walking home for the first time, and you are thinking of the shop-windows! Are you just like all the rest?”
“Oh, indeed, just precisely,” said I. “Ah, Harry, I never was in the street before that I felt quite free and yet quite protected and safe. Only think of the difference! I am not afraid of anybody or anything to-day. I am going home. If you were not so grave and proper I think I could dance all the way.”
Harry did not say another word; he held my arm close, and called me by my name. My name was Milly darling, to Harry; he said it sounded like the turn of an Irish song. He calls me Milly darling still, though we have been married two years.
And how pretty he had made that little parlour over Mrs. Grogram’s shop! Not a boot about anywhere that I could see, nor the shadow of a cigar; clean new muslin curtains up, and flowers on the table; and the landlady curtseying, and calling me Mrs. Langham. It was the very first time I had heard the name. How odd it sounded! and yet an hour after I should have laughed if any one had called me Miss Mortimer, as if that were the most absurd thing in the world.
And to make home does not require many rooms or a great deal of furniture. I have not a “house of my own” yet, and, perhaps, may not have for years. A poor subaltern, with nothing but his pay, when he is so foolish as to marry, has to take his wife to lodgings; but the best house in the world could not have felt to me a warmer, safer, more delightful home than Mrs. Grogram’s parlour above the shop.