is wife, "such a grand lady as that! one you go
and read your poetry to! What harm can there be in your poor little
wife helping to make a dress for a lady like that?"

"I tell you, Letty, I don't choose _my_ wife to do such a thing for the
greatest lady in the land! Good Heavens! if it _were_ to come to the
ears of the staff! It would be the ruin of me! I should never hold up
my head again!"

By this time Letty's head was hanging low, like a flower half broken
from its stem, and two big tears were slowly rolling down her cheeks.
But there was a gleam of satisfaction in her heart notwithstanding. Tom
thought so much of his little wife that he would not have her work for
the greatest lady in the land! She did not see that it was not pride in
her, but pride in himself, that made him indignant at the idea. It was
not "my _wife,"_ but "_my_ wife" with Tom. She looked again up timidly
in his face, and said, her voice trembling, and her cheeks wet, for she
could not wipe away the tears, because Tom still held her hands as one
might those of a naughty child:

"But, Tom! I don't exactly see how you can make so much of it, when you
don't think me--when you know I am not fit to go among such people."

To this Tom had no reply at hand: he was not yet far enough down the
devil's turnpike to be able to tell his wife that he had spoken the
truth--that he did not think her fit for such company; that he would be
ashamed of her in it; that she had no style; that, instead of carrying
herself as if she knew herself somebody--as good as anybody there,
indeed, being the wife of Tom Helmer--she had the meek look of one who
knew herself nobody, and did not know her husband to be anybody. He did
not think how little he had done to give the unassuming creature that
quiet confidence which a woman ought to gather from the assurance of
her husband's satisfaction in her, and the consciousness of being, in
dress and everything else, pleasing in his eyes, therefore of occupying
the only place in the world she desires to have. But he did think that
Letty's next question might naturally be, "Why do you not take me with
you?" No doubt he could have answered, no one had ever asked her; but
then she might rejoin, had he ever put it in any one's way to ask her?
It might even occur to her to in-quire whether he had told Mrs. Redmain
that he had a wife! and he had heart enough left to imagine it might
mortally hurt her to find he lived a life so utterly a