If Only etc. | Page 3

carriage which Mrs. Blackall had insisted upon ordering to take the
young couple to the station was at the door, and in the bustle that
ensued Jack lost sight of all annoyances and remembered only that he
had married the girl he loved and that he was the happiest fellow in the
universe; and amid a shower of rice and a white satin slipper (one of
Saidie's), which fell right into Bella's lap; the last farewell was spoken,

and they drove away.
"Only to Brighton!" cried Nina Nankin, the celebrity famed for the
height to which she could raise one leg while standing upon the other.
"What a mean chap! He might have forked out enough for a trip to
Paris, I should have thought."
"It wouldn't satisfy me," returned Saidie, turning up her nose
disdainfully; "but he isn't my style, anyway."
"Bit of a prig, eh?"
Saidie nodded.
"I do detest a man who fancies himself a head and shoulders above the
rest of his kind," said that young lady vehemently; "you'll generally
find out he don't amount to a row of pins. My! ain't I glad I'm not going
to live with him. I would as lief go to Bible-class every day of the week.
I'll bet my bottom dollar Bella'll see the mistake she's made before she's
many weeks older. There's a chip of the old block about that young
woman, for all her baby ways and her innocent know-nothing. He'll be
a spry man, will Dr. Chetwynd, to come up to her. It'll take him all he
knows to get ahead, you bet".
Saidie lay back in the chair and laughed till the tears ran down her
cheeks.
CHAPTER II
It was not long before Dr. Chetwynd's eyes were fully open to the
mistake he had made and that he realised the fact that you cannot
fashion a Dresden vase out of earthenware, and though pinchbeck may
pass muster for gold, it does not make it the real article.
At first Bella did try her "level best" as Saidie put it, to be all that Jack
required of her. She took his lecturings humbly, held her peace when he
scolded her (and I am afraid he constantly did), and acknowledged in
the depths of her shallow little mind that she fell far short of what his

wife should be. But as time went on she grew less solicitous about
pleasing him. His standard was an almost impossible one to the very
second-rate little American girl, to whom the atmosphere of the "Halls"
was far more congenial than the humdrum, quiet life she led in the
Camberwell New Road, and she slipped back little by little into the
mire out of which he had raised her.
"I can never learn to be what he wants me to," she said a little
pathetically to Saidie--"It is like standing on tiptoe all the time trying to
reach up to his standard. I'm sick of it. If he loved me well enough to
marry me, the same love ought to be strong enough to make him
contented with me. After all, I'm the same Bella now that I was then."
A word of advice at this juncture might have quieted the poor little wife,
and brought her back into safe paths, for she really loved Jack in her
heart; but Saidie was not the person to give it. Privately she considered
her sister a fool to have put up with this ridiculous nonsense of her
husband's as long as she had done; and the line of argument she took
was about the worst she could have adopted for the happiness and
peace of the Camberwell household.
She was a good deal older than Bella, and the girl had been wont to rely
upon her in a great measure, and to look up to her as a practical,
sensible person, which Bella was quite ready to admit she herself was
very far from being; so now, when Saidie spoke in a resolute,
determined way, she listened meekly, if she did not in so many words
acquiesce in the wisdom and justice of what she said.
"As far as I can see, you don't get a bit of fun and happiness out of your
life," remarked Saidie, critically examining her features in the glass.
"What did you marry him for, I should like to know? You might as well
be Bella Blackall, on the boards again, and free, as the wife of a stingy
fellow like that."
"Oh! Saidie, he doesn't grudge me anything." The young wife felt a
little compunction in her heart.
"Yes he does." Saidie turned round and faced her sister. "He don't like

you to enjoy yourself, not a little bit. He would keep you wrapped up in
cotton wool if