A Great Success | Page 3

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 thought to spare to her own looks. Fortunately she had an instinctive love for neatness and delicacy; so that her little figure, besides being agile and vigorous--capable of much dignity too on occasion--was of a singular trimness and grace in all its simple appointments. Her trousseau was long since exhausted, and she rarely had a new dress. But slovenly she could not be.
It was the matter of a new dress