“Oh no, it is not any innocent remark. It is so troublesome. Just when I thought I had got it quite straight! But what do you know about such things? You have nothing to say to Mary’s frock. You never would notice, I believe, if she had not one to her back, or wore the same old rag year after year—— ”
“Yes, Emily, I should notice,” said Mr. Pen with some compunction; “and I am very sorry that you should have so much trouble. Send for Miss Price to-morrow, and I will pay her out of my own money. You must not take it off the house.”
“Oh, William! William!” said his wife, “who is it that will suffer if your own money, as you call it, runs out? Do you think I am so inconsiderate as only to think of what I have for the house! Isn’t it all one purse, and will it not be the children that will suffer eventually whoever pays? No, your money shall not be spent to save me trouble. What is the good of us but to take trouble?” said Mrs. Pen with heroic fortitude.
Mr. Pen sighed. Perhaps he was more conscious of the litter of dressmaking than of this fine sentiment. But anyhow he did not give any applause to the heroine. He left indeed this family subject altogether, and after a momentary pause, said, half to himself, “John Musgrave’s children! Who could have thought it! And how strange it all is—— ”
“Really, Mr. Pennithorne,” said his wife, offended, “this is too much. I don’t believe you think one half so much of your own children as of those Musgraves. What did they ever do for us?”
“They did this for us, my dear, that but for them I should not have had a home to offer you—nor a family at all,” said the vicar with a little warmth. “I might have been still travelling with boys about the world—— ”
“Oh, William, not with your talents,” said his wife, looking at him with admiration. With all her fretfulness and insensibility to those fine points of internal arrangement for which he had a half-developed, half-subdued taste, Emily had still a great admiration for her husband. Now Mary Musgrave, who was, unknown to either, her spiritual rival, had no admiration for good Mr. Pen at all. This gave the partner of his life an infinite advantage. His voice softened as he replied, shaking his head:
“Unfortunately, my love, other people do not appreciate my talents as you do.”
“That is because they don’t know you so well,” she said with flattering promptitude. Mr. Pennithorne drew a chair to the fire and sat down. It was but rarely that he received this domestic adulation; but it warmed him, and did him good.
“Ah, my dear, I fear I must not lay that flattering unction to my soul,” he said.