True to his Colours | Page 5

and before she was
one and twenty, Kate Evans was married to William Foster at the
registrar's office.
And now, on this December evening, rather more than a year had gone
by since the wedding-day. And what of the love which was to have
effected such great things? Alas! the gilding had got sadly rubbed off.
Not many weeks after the marriage a cloud began to gather on the face
of both husband and wife.
Coming home some day at dinner-time he would find no table laid out,
the meat half raw, and the potatoes the same; while an open book of
poetry or science, turned face downwards on the sloppy dresser,
showed how his wife had been spending the time which ought to have
been occupied in preparing her husband's meal. Then, again, when
work was over, he would find, on his return home, his wife, with
uncombed hair and flushed cheeks, on her knees, puffing away at a few
sparks in the cheerless grate, while the kettle rested sulkily on a cliff of
black coal, and looked as if boiling was on its part a very remote

possibility indeed.
Not that Kate was a gadder about or a gossip, but she was sleeveless,
dawdling, and dreamy, and always behindhand. Everything was out of
its place. Thus Foster would take up a spill-case, expecting to find
material wherewith to light his evening pipe; but instead of spills, it
was full of greasy hair-pins. And when, annoyed and disgusted, he tore
a fly-leaf out of one of his wife's school prizes, declaring that, if she did
not provide him with spills, he would take them where he could get
them, a storm of passionate reproaches was followed by a volley of
curses on his part, and a hasty and indignant retreat to the public- house
parlour.
And then, again, his late hours at the club, or the unwelcome presence
of his sceptical companions, whom he would sometimes bring home to
discuss their opinions over pipes and spirits, would be the ground of
strong and angry remonstrance. And the breach began soon to widen.
Washing-day would come round with all its discomforts, which she had
not learned the art of mitigating or removing. Coming in, in better
spirits perhaps than usual, intending to have a cheerful tea and a cozy
chat after it, he would find everything in a state of disturbance,
especially his young wife's temper, with plenty of steam everywhere
except from the spout of the tea-pot. Indeed, poor Kate was one of
those domestic paradoxes in her own person and house which are
specially trying to one who cares for home comfort: and who is there
who does not care for it? She would be always cleaning, yet never
clean; always smartening things up, and yet never keeping them tidy.
And so when William, on coming home, would find pale, ghost-like
linen garments hanging reeking from the embossed arm of the gas
chandelier a large piece of dissolving soap on the centre of the
table-cover, a great wooden tub in the place where his arm-chair should
be, a lump of sodden rags in one of his slippers, and his wife toiling
and fuming in the midst of all, with her hair in papers and her elbows in
suds, with scarce the faintest hope for him of getting his evening meal
served for more than an hour to come,--what wonder if harsh words
escaped him, repaid with words equally harsh from his excited partner,

and followed by his flinging himself in a rage out of such a home, and
returning near midnight with a plunging, stumbling step on the stairs,
which sent all the blood chilly back to the heart of the unhappy woman,
and quenched in sobs and tears the bitter words that were ready to burst
forth!
But at last there came the little babe, and with it a rush of returning
fondness and tenderness into the heart of both the parents; yet only for
a time. The tide of home misery had set in full again; and now on this
winter evening, a little more than a twelve-month after her marriage,
poor, unhappy Kate Foster knelt by the side of the little cradle, her tears
falling fast and thick on the small white arm of her sick baby; for very
sick it was, and she feared that death (ay, not death, but God--her heart,
her conscience said, "God,") was about to snatch from her the object
she loved best on earth, even with a passionate love.
Though it was winter and cold, yet the casement was ajar, for the
chimney of the room had smoked for weeks; but nothing had been done
towards remedying the trouble, except grumbling at it, and letting in
draughts of keen air through