sen because she had insisted on getting
out of bed to make the fires in the morning. Then, partly because the
recollection appeared to reproach him, and partly because, not
possessing the critical faculty, she had never learned to acknowledge
the existence of a flaw in a person she loved, she edged closer to him,
and replied cheerfully:

"I don't mind the work a bit, if only the children will keep well so we
shan't have to spend any more money. I shan't need any black clothes,"
she added, with a trembling lip. "Mrs. Carrington has given me this
dress, as she has gone out of mourning, and I've got a piece of blue
silk put away that I am going to have dyed."

He glanced at the shapeless dress, not indignantly as he would once have
done, but with a tinge of quiet amusement.

"It makes you look every day of forty."

"I know it isn't becoming, but at least it will save having to buy one."

In spite of the fact that her small economies had made it possible for
them to live wholesomely, and with at least an appearance of decency, on
his meagre salary, they had always aroused in him a sense of bitter
exasperation. He respected her, of course, for her saving, yet in his
heart he knew that she would probably have charmed him more had she been
a spendthrift--since the little virtues are sometimes more deadly to the
passion of love than are the large vices. While he nodded, without
disputing the sound common sense in her words, she thought a little
wistfully how nice it would be to have pretty things if only one could
afford them. Someday, when the children's schooling was over and Oliver
had got a larger salary, she would begin to buy clothes that were
becoming rather than durable. But that was in the future, and,
meanwhile, how much better it was to grudge every penny she spent on
herself as long as there were unpaid bills at the doctor's and the
grocer's. All of which was, of course, perfectly reasonable, and like
other women who have had a narrow experience of life, she cherished the
delusion that a man's love, as well as his philosophy, is necessarily
rooted in reason.

When they turned homeward, the bay mare, pricked by desire for her
stable, began to travel more rapidly, and the fall of her hoofs,
accompanied by the light roll of the wheels, broke the silence which had
almost imperceptibly settled upon them. Not until the cart drew up at
the gate did Virginia realize that they had hardly spoken a dozen words
on the dr