“‘Why, I can hardly say as how I do, sir,’ she replied; ‘and yet I am sure I have seen you somewhere.’
“‘That you have, Ma’am,’ answered he; ‘I am your old customer, Tom Such-an-one.’
“‘Lack me! is it possible!—and so you are! Why, what a change there is upon thee! thou art quite a gentleman turned. And is this lady thy wife, and these thy children? Well, now! how smart you have them all! How in the world do you manage it?’
“‘O Ma’am,’ said Tom the mechanic, ‘nothing in the world is more easy—the fools’ pennies which I before gave to buy your fine carpets, your mirror, and your silver plate, I now keep in my own pocket.’ So saying, he bowed to her, and wishing her good morning, with his wife’s arm in his, they and their children left the house and returned home. Such,” added Hannah, “is the true story of Tom the mechanic.”
The anecdote told upon her husband; and when she had concluded, he arose and took her hand, and said—
“You were right, love. I see it now—the story of Tom the mechanic has convinced me that a penny saved is a penny gained: and I shall remember it.”
Walter Kerr did remember it; and from that day he ceased his nightly visits to the club. The world prospered with him; and in a short time there was not a more thriving or a more respected merchant in the town of H—— than Walter Kerr. Every one began to say that he was greatly indebted for his good fortune to the excellent management of his wife. Even his parents at length admitted that his marrying Hannah Jerdan was the most fortunate thing that ever their son Walter did; and he himself said that she had been worth to him her weight in gold.
They had two children. Their first-born was a boy, and his name was Francis; and their daughter they had called Jacobini, after an only brother of Hannah’s and of whom nothing had been heard for many years. No poet in his waking dreams of domestic bliss hath pictured a happier pair than were Walter Kerr and his gentle Hannah. She was unto him as a guardian spirit, an affectionate counsellor, and a friend that sticketh closer than a brother. And as their children grew up in beauty before them, like fair flowers in spring, stealing day by day into loveliness, so grew their joy.
But, within eight years after his marriage, an unbidden guest—who entereth alike the palace and the cottage, whose eye pierceth through the deepest gloom of the dungeon, as he smiteth the prisoner and saith, “There is no darkness like unto my darkness”—placed his noiseless foot upon the threshold of the prosperous merchant, and with his cold and poisoned finger touched the bosom of the wife and mother.