But at table that night she recounted her experience: “The very courteous gentleman who informed me of your predicament happened to be a cousin of Mr. Banks, of Head and Banks. (They supply your grain, I believe?) Mrs. Howe (isn’t it R. E. Howe who is president of the Newcomb Club?) was at my elbow. The salesgirl has Sam junior’s Sunday-school class. Doubtless it will interest them all to know you are in such straits you can’t clothe your children.”
Ah? She had touched his vulnerable point? Instantly she was swept by compunction, by impulses to make amends, to him, to their love. Their love! That delicate wild thing she kept in a warm, moist, sheltered place, and forbore to look at for yellowing leaves.
Like the battle of Blenheim, it was a famous victory, but what good came of it at last? The overcoat came home, to be sure, with cap and shoes besides. But she was too gallant to press her advantage. Besides, she still looked for him to take a hint.
He did, after his own fashion. “You ought to see Judith here,” he laughed to a caller, “practising her kindergarten methods on me.” His imperturbability was at once a boast and a slight.
“He doesn’t mean it,” she apologized, later, protecting herself by defending him. “You know how men are; the best of them a bit stupid about some things. They don’t mean to hurt you. You know it, but you can’t help crying.”
“Oh, I understand!” (That any one should sympathize with her! It was not so much her vanity that suffered as her precious regard for him, her pride in their marriage.) “Nobody minds little things like that against such devotion and constancy. Why, he talks of you all the time, Judith; of your style, your housekeeping. You are his pet boast. He says you can do more with less than anybody he ever saw.” And then Judith laughed.
They were all articles of the creed she herself repeated—and doubted more and more. Faithful enough. He never came or went without the customary kiss. When he had typhoid fever, no one might be near him but her, until her exhaustion could no longer be concealed, when he fretted about her—until he fretted himself back into high temperature and had a relapse.
So, run down as she was, she hid it, kept up, went on alone, adding to the score of her inevitable day of reckoning, after the old heroic-criminal woman-way.
She had begun with ideas of their saving together for a purpose; but, not allowed to plan, she must use every opportunity to provide against future stricture; besides, Sam’s arbitrary and unregulated spending made her poor little economies both futile and unfair.
“I know nothing about your business. How can I tell if I spend too much?”