A Great Success | Page 4

which was now indeed running in her mind. She took up Lady Dunstable's letter, and read it pensively through again.
"You can accept for yourself, Arthur, of course," she said, looking up. "But I can't possibly go."
Meadows protested loudly.
"You have no excuse at all!" he declared hotly. "Lady Dunstable has given us a month's notice. You _can't_ get out of it. Do you want me to be known as a man who accepts smart invitations without his wife? There is no more caddish creature in the world."
Doris could not help smiling upon him. But her mouth was none the less determined.
"I haven't got a single frock that's fit for Crosby Ledgers. And I'm not going on tick for a new one!"
"I never heard anything so absurd! Shan't we have more money in a few weeks than we've had for years?"
"I dare say. It's all wanted. Besides, I have my work to finish."
"My dear Doris!"
A slight red mounted in Doris's cheeks.
"Oh, you may be as scornful as you like! But ten pounds is ten pounds, and I like keeping engagements."
The "work" in question meant illustrations for a children's book. Doris had accepted the commission with eagerness, and had been going regularly to the Campden Hill studio of an Academician--her mother's brother--who was glad to supply her with some of the "properties" she wanted for her drawings.
"I shall soon not allow you to do anything of the kind," said Meadows with decision.
"On the contrary! I shall always take paid work when I can get it," was the firm reply--"unless--"
"Unless what?"
"You know," she said quietly. Meadows was silent a moment, then reached out for her hand, which she gave him. They had no children; and, as he well knew, Doris pined for them. The look in her eyes when she nursed her friends' babies had often hurt him. But after all, why despair? It was only four years from their wedding day.
But he was not going to be beaten in the matter of Crosby Ledgers. They had a long and heated discussion, at the end of which Doris surrendered.
"Very well! I shall have to spend a week in doing up my old black gown, and it will be a botch at the end of it. But--_nothing--will induce me_--to get a new one!"
She delivered this ultimatum with her hands behind her, a defeated, but still resolute young person. Meadows, having won the main battle, left the rest to Providence, and went off to his "den" to read all his letters through once more--agreeable task!--and to write a note of acceptance to the Home Secretary, who had asked him to luncheon. Doris was not included in the invitation. "But anybody may ask a husband--or a wife--to lunch, separately. That's understood. I shan't do it often, however--that I can tell them!" And justified by this Spartan temper as to the future, he wrote a charming note, accepting the delights of the present, so full of epigram that the Cabinet Minister to whom it was addressed had no sooner read it than he consigned it instanter to his wife's collection of autographs.
Meanwhile Doris was occupied partly in soothing the injured feelings of Jane, and partly in smoothing out and inspecting her one evening frock. She decided that it would take her a week to "do it up," and that she would do it herself. "A week wasted!" she thought--"and all for nothing. What do we want with Lady Dunstable! She'll flatter Arthur, and make him lazy. They all do! And I've no use for her at all. Maid indeed! Does she think nobody can exist without that appendage? How I should like to make her live on four hundred a year, with a husband that will spend seven!"
She stood, half amused, half frowning, beside the bed on which lay her one evening frock. But the frown passed away, effaced by an expression much softer and tenderer than anything she had allowed Arthur to see of late. Of course she delighted in Arthur's success; she was proud, indeed, through and through. Hadn't she always known that he had this gift, this quick, vivacious power of narrative, this genius--for it was something like it--for literary portraiture? And now at last the stimulus had come--and the opportunity with it. Could she ever forget the anxiety of the first lecture--the difficulty she had had in making him finish it--his careless, unbusiness-like management of the whole affair? But then had come the burst of praise and popularity; and Arthur was a new man. No difficulty--or scarcely--in getting him to work since then! Applause, so new and intoxicating, had lured him on, as she had been wont to lure the black pony of her childhood with a handful of sugar. Yes, her Arthur was a genius; she had always known it. And something of