"I don't think of anything else just now, Mr. Taggard; though if there should be a few dollars over and above what these will cost, they won't come amiss. I should like to have a little change in my pocket, if only for the novelty of the thing. You needn't fear its being wasted."
Mr. Taggard was evidently not a little astonished at this sudden outbreak in his usually quiet and patient wife, but who, like most women of that stamp, had considerable spirit when it was aroused.
"Now that you are through, Mrs. Taggard, perhaps you will let me say a word. Here is all the money I can spare you this month; so you can make the most of it."
Laying a roll of bills on the table, Mr. Taggard walked to the door; remarking, just before he closed it, that he should leave town on the next train, to be absent about a week.
The reverie into which Mrs. Taggard fell, as she listened to the sound of his retreating steps, was far from being a pleasant one. Aside from her natural vexation, she felt grieved and saddened by the change that had come over her once kind, indulgent husband. He seemed to be entirely filled with the greed of gain, the desire to amass money—not for the sake of the good that it might enable him to enjoy, or confer, but for the mere pleasure of hoarding it. And this miserly feeling grew upon him daily, until he seemed to grudge his family the common comforts of life. And yet Mrs. Taggard knew that he was not only in receipt of a comfortable income from his business, but had laid by a surplus, yearly, ever since their marriage.
She had taxed her ingenuity to save in every possible way, but when the monthly bills were presented the same scene was enacted, only it grew worse and worse.
And this penuriousness extended to himself. He grudged himself, as well as wife and children, clothing suitable to his means and station, and went about looking so rusty and shabby that Mrs. Taggard often felt ashamed of him, inwardly wondering if he could be the same man who had wooed and won her.
With a heavy sigh Mrs. Taggard took up the roll of bills upon the table, hoping to find enough to pay what was already due—she did not look for more.
An ejaculation of astonishment burst from her lips as she unrolled the paper in which it was folded. It contained $500 in bills, and a check for $500 more.
With a look of quiet determination in her eyes, Mrs. Taggard arose to her feet. "The family should now have some of the comforts to which they were entitled, if they never did again."