"If you can't sew the buttons on my shirt, Mrs. Jones, I will hire some one to do it."
This last expression of displeasure I never ventured upon but once. I have always felt ashamed of it since, whenever a recollection of my unreasonableness and impatience in the early times of the shirt button trouble has crossed my mind. My wife took it so much to heart, and so earnestly avowed her constant solicitude in regard to the shirt buttons, that I resolved from that time, to bear the evil like a man, and instead of grumbling or complaining, make known the fact of a deficiency whenever it occurred, as a good joke. And so for a year or so it used to be when the buttons were missing:
"Buttons again, Mrs. Jones;" or
"D'ye see that?" or
"Here's the old story"—
Always said laughingly, and varied as to the mood or fertility of fancy. But on so grave a subject as shirt buttons, Mrs. Jones had no heart for a joke. The fact that her vigilance had proved all in vain, and that, spite of constant care, a shirt had found its way into my drawer, lacking its full complement of buttons, was something too serious for a smile or a jest, and my words, no matter how lightly spoken, would be felt as a reproof. Any allusion, therefore, to shirt buttons, was sure to produce a cloud upon the otherwise calm brow of Mrs. Jones. It was a sore subject, and could not be touched even by the light end of a feather without producing pain.
What was I to do? Put off with the lack of a shirt button uncomplainingly? Pin my collar, if the little circular piece of bone or ivory were gone, and not hint at the omission? Yes; I resolved not to say a word more about shirt buttons, but to bear the evil, whenever it occurred, with the patience of a martyr. Many days had not passed after this resolution was taken, before, on changing my linen one morning, I found that there was a button less than the usual number on the bosom of my shirt. Mrs. Jones had been up on the evening before, half an hour after I was in bed, looking over my shirts, to see if every thing was in order. But even her sharp eyes had failed to discover the place left vacant by a deserting member of the shirt button fraternity. I knew she had done her best, and I pitied, rather than blamed her, for I was sensible that a knowledge of the fact which had just come to light would trouble her a thousand times more than it did me.
The breakfast hour passed without a discovery by Mrs. Jones of the fact that there was a button off of the bosom of my shirt. But, when I came in at dinner time, her first words, looking at me, were: "Why, Mr. Jones, there's a button off your bosom."
"I know," said I, indifferently. "It was off when I put the shirt on this morning. But it makes no difference—you can sew it on when the shirt next comes from the wash."
I was really sincere in what I said, and took some merit to myself for being as composed as I was on so agitating subject. Judge of my surprise, then, to hear Mrs. Jones exclaim, with a flushed face, "Indeed, Mr. Jones, this is too much! no difference, indeed? A nice opinion people must have had of your wife, to see you going about with your bosom all gaping open in that style?"