They never had been opened;and we had no oyster-knives--and couldn’t have used them if we had;so we looked at the oysters and ate the mutton.At least we ate as much of it as was done,and made up with capers. If I had permitted him,I am satisfied that Traddles would have made a perfect savage of himself,and eaten a plateful of raw meat,to express enjoyment of the repast;but I would hear of no such immolation on the altar of friendship,and we had a course of bacon instead; there happening,by good fortune, to be cold bacon in the larder.
My poor little wife was in such affliction when she thought I should be annoyed,and in such a state of joy when she found I was not,that the discomfiture I had subdued,very soon vanished, and we passed a happy evening;Dora sitting with her arm on my chair while Traddles and I discussed a glass of wine, and taking every opportunity of whispering in my ear that it was so good of me not to be a cruel, cross old boy. By and by she made tea for us; which it was so pretty to see her do, as if she was busying herself with a set of doll’s tea-things, that I was not particular about the quality of the beverage. Then Traddles and I played a game or two at cribbage; and Dora singing to the guitar the while, it seemed to me as if our courtship and marriage were a tender dream of mine, and the night when I first listened to her voice were not yet over.
When Traddles went away,and I came back into the parlour from seeing him out,my wife planted her chair close to mine,and sat down by my side. ‘I am very sorry,’ she said.‘Will you try to teach me, Doady?’
‘I must teach myself first, Dora,’ said I.‘I am as bad as you, love.’
‘Ah!But you can learn,’ she returned; ‘and you are a clever, clever man!’
‘Nonsense, mouse!’ said I.
‘I wish,’ resumed my wife, after a long silence,‘that I could have gone down into the country for a whole year,and lived with Agnes!’
Her hands were clasped upon my shoulder,and her chin rested on them,and her blue eyes looked quietly into mine.
‘Why so?’ I asked.
‘I think she might have improved me,and I think I might have learned from her,’ said Dora.
‘All in good time, my love.Agnes has had her father to take care of for these many years,you should remember. Even when she was quite a child,she was the Agnes whom we know,’ said I.
‘Will you call me a name I want you to call me?’ inquired Dora, without moving.
‘What is it?’ I asked with a smile.
‘It’s a stupid name,’ she said,shaking her curls for a moment. ‘Child-wife.’
I laughingly asked my child-wife what her fancy was in desiring to be so called.She answered without moving,otherwise than as the arm I twined about her may have brought her blue eyes nearer to me:
‘I don’t mean, you silly fellow,that you should use the name instead of Dora.I only mean that you should think of me that way.When you are going to be angry with me,say to yourself, “it’s only my child-wife!” When I am very disappointing, say, “I knew,a long time ago, that she would make but a child-wife!” When you miss what I should like to be,and I think can never be, say,“still my foolish child-wife loves me!” For indeed I do.’
I had not been serious with her;having no idea until now, that she was serious herself.But her affectionate nature was so happy in what I now said to her with my whole heart, that her face became a laughing one before her glittering eyes were dry. She was soon my child-wife indeed; sitting down on the floor outside the Chinese House, ringing all the little bells one after another, to punish Jip for his recent bad behaviour; while Jip lay blinking in the doorway with his head out, even too lazy to be teased.
This appeal of Dora’s made a strong impression on me.I look back on the time I write of;I invoke the innocent figure that I dearly loved,to come out from the mists and shadows of the past,and turn its gentle head towards me once again;and I can still declare that this one little speech was constantly in my memory. I may not have used it to the best account; I was young and inexperienced; but I never turned a deaf ear to its artless pleading.
Dora told me, shortly afterwards,that she was going to be a wonderful housekeeper.Accordingly, she polished the tablets,pointed the pencil, bought an immense account-book,carefully stitched up with a needle and thread all the leaves of the Cookery Book which Jip had torn, and made quite a desperate little attempt ‘to be good’, as she called it. But the figures had the old obstinate propensity--they WOULD NOT add up. When she had entered two or three laborious items in the account-book, Jip would walk over the page, wagging his tail, and smear them all out. Her own little right-hand middle finger got steeped to the very bone in ink; and I think that was the only decided result obtained.
Sometimes, of an evening,when I was at home and at work--for I wrote a good deal now,and was beginning in a small way to be known as a writer--I would lay down my pen, and watch my child-wife trying to be good. First of all, she would bring out the immense account-book, and lay it down upon the table, with a deep sigh. Then she would open it at the place where Jip had made it illegible last night, and call Jip up, to look at his misdeeds. This would occasion a diversion in Jip’s favour, and some inking of his nose, perhaps, as a penalty. Then she would tell Jip to lie down on the table instantly, ‘like a lion’--which was one of his tricks, though I cannot say the likeness was striking--and, if he were in an obedient humour, he would obey. Then she would take up a pen, and begin to write, and find a hair in it. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and find that it spluttered. Then she would take up another pen, and begin to write, and say in a low voice, ‘Oh, it’s a talking pen, and will disturb Doady!’ And then she would give it up as a bad job,and put the account-book away,after pretending to crush the lion with it.
Or, if she were in a very sedate and serious state of mind,she would sit down with the tablets,and a little basket of bills and other documents,which looked more like curl-papers than anything else,and endeavour to get some result out of them.After severely comparing one with another,and making entries on the tablets,and blotting them out,and counting all the fingers of her left hand over and over again,backwards and forwards,she would be so vexed and discouraged,and would look so unhappy,that it gave me pain to see her bright face clouded--and for me!--and I would go softly to her, and say:
‘What’s the matter, Dora?’
Dora would look up hopelessly, and reply,‘They won’t come right. They make my head ache so.And they won’t do anything I want!’
Then I would say, ‘Now let us try together.Let me show you, Dora.’