ad
sufficed for others, but they by no means satisfied her.

"Do you think, Diggory Beggs," she asked, indignantly, "that after
all these years I do not know you as well as I do the contents of
my linen chest? I have never before known you open your purse
strings one inch wider than was necessary. Have I not always had to
ask, until I am verily ashamed, before I can get a new gown for
myself, or a decent cloak for the girls? You have ever been hard
fisted with your money, and never disposed to spend a groat, save
on good occasion. There is not the wife of a trader of your
standing in Plymouth but makes a braver show than I do, when we
walk on the hoe on holidays or feast days.

"There is something at the bottom of all this I don't understand;
but mark you, Diggory, I am not to be kept in the dark. As your
wife, I have a right to know why you are throwing about good and
lawful money. I toil and slave to keep your house decent and
respectable, at small cost; but I shall do so no longer. If you can
afford to throw money into the gutter in one way, you can in
another; and people will cry shame on you, when, as they say, you
are pampering up your sailors, in such manner as will cause
discontent among all others in the port, while your wife and
daughters are walking about in homespun!"

Mistress Mercy did not succeed in extracting the information she
desired from her husband, who was, however, forced to fall back
upon the defense that he had his reasons, but that he was pledged
to say nothing concerning them.

"Pledged!" she replied, scornfully. "And to whom are you pledged, I
should like to know? I thought you were pledged to me, and that you
were bound to cherish and comfort me; which means, of course, that
you were to have no secrets from me, and to tell me all that I
desire to know."

But though Diggory kept the secret, albeit with much trouble; and
with many misgivings as to what would happen in the future, when
his wife came to learn of the important venture he had undertaken,
without consulting her; she nevertheless succeeded so far that, in
order to pacify her, he was obliged to allow her a free hand in
choosing, from his magazines, such pieces of cloth and silk for
herself and the girls as she had a fancy to. This permission she
did not abuse as to quality, for she knew well enough what was
becoming, in the way of dress, for the wife of a merchant; and that
it was not seemly, for such a one, to attire herself