A Great Success | Page 3

Can I induce you
both to come to Crosby Ledgers for a week-end, on July 16? We hope
to have a pleasant party, a diplomat or two, the Home Secretary, and
General Hichen--perhaps some others. You would, I am sure, admire
our hill country, and I should like to show you some of the precious
autographs we have inherited.
"Yours sincerely, "RACHEL DUNSTABLE.

"If your wife brings a maid, perhaps she will kindly let me know."
Doris laughed, and the amused scorn of her laugh annoyed her husband.
However, at that moment their small house-parlourmaid entered with
the tea-tray, and Doris rose to make a place for it. The parlourmaid put
it down with much unnecessary noise, and Doris, looking at her in
alarm, saw that her expression was sulky and her eyes red. When the
girl had departed, Mrs. Meadows said with resignation--
"There! that one will give me notice to-morrow!"
"Well, I'm sure you could easily get a better!" said her husband sharply.
Doris shook her head.
"The fourth in six months!" she said, sighing. "And she really is a good
girl."
"I suppose, as usual, she complains of me!" The voice was that of an
injured man.
"Yes, dear, she does! They all do. You give them a lot of extra work
already, and all these things you have been buying lately--oh, Arthur, if
you _wouldn't_ buy things!--mean more work. You know that copper
coal-scuttle you sent in yesterday?"
"Well, isn't it a beauty?--a real Georgian piece!" cried Meadows,
indignantly.
"I dare say it is. But it has to be cleaned. When it arrived Jane came to
see me in this room, shut the door, and put her back against it 'There's
another of them beastly copper coal-scuttles come!' You should have
seen her eyes blazing. 'And I should like to know, ma'am, who's going
to clean it--'cos I can't.' And I just had to promise her it might go dirty."
"Lazy minx!" said Meadows, good-humouredly, with his mouth full of
tea-cake. "At last I have something good to look at in this room." He
turned his eyes caressingly towards the new coal-scuttle. "I suppose I

shall have to clean it myself!"
Doris laughed again--this time almost hysterically--but was checked by
a fresh entrance of Jane, who, with an air of defiance, deposited a
heavy parcel on a chair beside her mistress, and flounced out again.
"What is this?" said Doris in consternation. "_Books_? More books?
Heavens, Arthur, what have you been ordering now! I couldn't sleep
last night for thinking of the book-bills."
"You little goose! Of course, I must buy books! Aren't they my tools,
my stock-in-trade? Haven't these lectures justified the book-bills a
dozen times over?"
This time Arthur Meadows surveyed his wife in real irritation and
disgust.
"But, Arthur!--you could get them all at the London Library--you know
you could!"
"And pray how much time do I waste in going backwards and forwards
after books? Any man of letters worth his salt wants a library of his
own--within reach of his hand."
"Yes, if he can pay for it!" said Doris, with plaintive emphasis, as she
ruefully turned over the costly volumes which the parcel contained.
"Don't fash yourself, my dear child! Why, what I'm getting for the
Dizzy lecture is alone nearly enough to pay all the book bills."
"It isn't! And just think of all the others! Well--never mind!"
Doris's protesting mood suddenly collapsed. She sat down on a stool
beside her husband, rested her elbow on his knee, and, chin in hand,
surveyed him with a softened countenance. Doris Meadows was not a
beauty; only pleasant-faced, with good eyes, and a strong, expressive
mouth. Her brown hair was perhaps her chief point, and she wore it
rippled and coiled so as to set off a shapely head and neck. It was

always a secret grievance with her that she had so little positive beauty.
And her husband had never flattered her on the subject. In the early
days of their marriage she had timidly asked him, after one of their
bridal dinner-parties in which she had worn her wedding-dress--"Did I
look nice to-night? Do you--do you ever think I look pretty, Arthur?"
And he had looked her over, with an odd change of
expression--careless affection passing into something critical and
cool:--"I'm never ashamed of you, Doris, in any company. Won't you
be satisfied with that?" She had been far from satisfied; the phrase had
burnt in her memory from then till now. But she knew Arthur had not
meant to hurt her, and she bore him no grudge. And, by now, she was
too well acquainted with the rubs and prose of life, too much occupied
with house-books, and rough servants, and the terror of an overdrawn
account, to have any time or