International Short Stories: American Part 48

No matter for cold coffee; you should have been up before.

What sad, thin, poorly cooked chops, to eat with your rolls!

She thinks they are very good, and wonders how you can set such an example to your children.

The b.u.t.ter is nauseating.

She has no other, and hopes you'll not raise a storm about b.u.t.ter a little turned. I think I see myself, ruminated I, sitting meekly at table, scarce daring to lift up my eyes, utterly f.a.gged out with some quarrel of yesterday, choking down detestably sour m.u.f.fins, that my wife thinks are "delicious"--slipping in dried mouthfuls of burnt ham off the side of my forktines--slipping off my chair sideways at the end, and slipping out with my hat between my knees, to business, and never feeling myself a competent, sound-minded man till the oak door is between me and Peggy.

"Ha-ha! not yet!" said I, and in so earnest a tone that my dog started to his feet, c.o.c.ked his eye to have a good look into my face, met my smile of triumph with an amiable wag of the tail, and curled up again in the corner.

Again, Peggy is rich enough, well enough, mild enough, only she doesn't care a fig for you. She has married you because father or grandfather thought the match eligible, and because she didn't wish to disoblige them. Besides, she didn't positively hate you, and thought you were a respectable enough young person; she has told you so repeatedly at dinner. She wonders you like to read poetry; she wishes you would buy her a good cook-book; and insists upon your making your will at the birth of the first baby.

She thinks Captain So-and-So a splendid-looking fellow, and wishes you would trim up a little, were it only for appearance' sake.

You need not hurry up from the office so early at night, she, bless her dear heart! does not feel lonely. You read to her a love tale: she interrupts the pathetic parts with directions to her seamstress. You read of marriages: she sighs, and asks if Captain So-and-So has left town. She hates to be mewed up in a cottage, or between brick walls; she does so love the Springs!

But, again, Peggy loves you--at least she swears it, with her hand on "The Sorrows of Werter." She has pin-money which she spends for the "Literary World" and the "Friends in Council." She is not bad-looking, save a bit too much of forehead; nor is she s.l.u.ttish, unless a _neglige_ till three o'clock, and an ink-stain on the forefinger be s.l.u.ttish; but then she is such a sad blue!

You never fancied, when you saw her buried in a three-volume novel, that it was anything more than a girlish vagary; and when she quoted Latin, you thought innocently that she had a capital memory for her samplers.

But to be bored eternally about divine Dante and funny Goldoni is too bad. Your copy of Ta.s.so, a treasure print of 1680, is all bethumbed and dog's-eared, and spotted with baby gruel. Even your Seneca--an Elzevir--is all sweaty with handling. She adores La Fontaine, reads Balzac with a kind of artist scowl, and will not let Greek alone.

You hint at broken rest and an aching head at breakfast, and she will fling you a sc.r.a.p of Anthology--in lien of the camphor-bottle--or chant the [Greek] _alai alai_ of tragic chorus.

The nurse is getting dinner; you are holding the baby; Peggy is reading Bruyere.

The fire smoked thick as pitch, and puffed out little clouds over the chimney-piece. I gave the fore-stick a kick; at the thought of Peggy, baby, and Bruyere.

Suddenly the flame flickered bluely athwart the smoke--caught at a twig below--rolled round the mossy oak-stick--twined among the crackling tree-limbs--mounted--lit up the whole body of smoke, and blazed out cheerily and bright. Doubt vanished with smoke, and hope began with flame.