The Talkative Wig | Page 9

to simple fare and to helping herself.
All would have been well with them but for one thing--the husband became a drunkard; not immediately--his love for his wife kept him sober for some time. Nothing was more beautiful than the way they lived for a year or two; but the habit of drinking a little, a habit which he had formed in his father's shop, and which he intended to cure, returned. The wretched man had not strength to resist it.
He became fretful, and Alice, for the first time in her life, became unhappy. She had never before heard any but the voice of kindness; and now, from him she loved best in the world she received sometimes sharp and disagreeable words. He was very sorry afterwards, and all would seem well again, but he did not really reform, and, many a time, my locks, falling over her innocent round cheek, were wetted with her tears.
Alice was good as an angel. She forgave her husband, believed him when he promised to leave off drinking, and never said a harsh word to him. James kept his promise for a month or two, but fell again, and then more hopelessly; for, after he had drunk a little, he feared his wife would know what he had done, and felt so unhappy that he drank more to drown his feelings; and, for the first time, he was brought home to his wife dead drunk.
Alice tended her husband as if he were only a sick man; she had him put into a nice bed, she washed and mended his soiled and torn clothes, she was near him to catch his first word when he recovered his senses, she never reproached him, she tried, by love, to win him back to sobriety and duty, she wept, she prayed for him.
He suffered all that man can from shame; he could not look her in the face; he had destroyed the charm and glory of life; he was unable, or rather he thought he was, to conquer his enemy; and, before six years were at an end, partly from broken and ruined health, and partly from utter misery, he fell into a rapid decline, and died.
Alice loved her husband; and never was sick man nursed with more loving, cheerful patience than was he. He wept over his sins; he asked her, with every returning and every setting sun, to forgive him and to pray God to pardon him.
She was an angel of pity and mercy to him, to the end. When she leaned over him to kiss him, he would pull her beautiful hair--for I was still beautiful--over his face which he was ashamed to show when he thought of his folly and wickedness. Many a time have I felt his hot tears of contrition as he pressed me against his sunken cheeks, and to his parched lips.
After her husband's death, the vicar of the parish came to see Alice, and did all he could to comfort and aid her.
She found that her husband had died largely in debt; that, when all the stock in his shop was sold, and the creditors paid, there would be nothing left for herself and two children.
She did not want to go back to her old father's house, and burden him with care and expense, and she resolved to open a little school for small children in the cottage in which she lived.
She had one spare room which she could let to an old lady who wanted just such a home as Alice could give her.
With a strong and hopeful heart, did Alice dedicate herself to the work before her, of supporting and educating her two orphan children. Alice's strict honesty had made her give up to her husband's creditors every thing she had, except the barest necessaries; and, now that she wanted to commence her school, she felt very much the want of a little cash to buy a few indispensable things.
The grocer and butcher had offered to supply her on credit, till her first payment from her scholars and boarder should come in. Still a little ready money was essential to her to begin. She would not borrow it, and was one day thinking what she should do, when her eye, wandering over a newspaper which the vicar had kindly lent her, fell on an advertisement offering a high price for handsome hair long and thick enough to make wigs.
Alice heard the good curate say that he was going to London on business in a day or two, and her determination was made in a moment.
I said that Alice had kept nothing that she could do without; she had, however, kept the white muslin gown she wore when she was married. She thought she could not give this up. "I