One Saturday afternoon he happened to come home earlier than he was expected, and entering her bedroom suddenly, he found her seated in the basket-chair in the window, with a large book upon her knees. Her face, as she looked up at him with a mixed expression of joy and of confusion, was stained by recent tears. She put the book hastily down upon the dressing-stand.
'Maude, you've been crying.'
'No, Frank, no!'
'O Maude, you fibber! Remove those tears instantly.' He knelt down beside her and helped. 'Better now?'
'Yes, dearest, I am quite happy.'
'Tears all gone?'
'Quite gone.'
'Well, then, explain!'
'I didn't mean to tell you, Frank!' She gave the prettiest, most provocative little wriggles as her secret was drawn from her. 'I wanted to do it without your knowing. I thought it would be a surprise for you. But I begin to understand now that my ambition was much too high. I am not clever enough for it. But it is disappointing all the same.'
Frank took the bulky book off the table. It was Mrs. Beeton's Book of Household Management. The open page was headed, 'General Observations on the Common Hog,' and underneath was a single large tear-drop. It had fallen upon a woodcut of the Common Hog, in spite of which Frank solemnly kissed it, and turned Maude's trouble into laughter.
'Now you are all right again. I do hate to see you crying, though you never look more pretty. But tell me, dear, what was your ambition?'
'To know as much as any woman in England about housekeeping. To know as much as Mrs. Beeton. I wanted to master every page of it, from the first to the last.'
'There are 1641 of them,' said Frank, turning them over.
'I know. I felt that I should be quite old before I had finished. But the last part, you see, is all about wills, and bequests, and homeopathy, and things of that kind. We could do it later. It is the early part that I want to learn now--but it IS so hard.'
'But why do you wish to do it, Maude?'
'Because I want you to be as happy as Mr. Beeton.'
'I'll bet I am.'
'No, no, you can't be, Frank. It says somewhere here that the happiness and comfort of the husband depend upon the housekeeping of the wife. Mrs. Beeton must have been the finest housekeeper in the world. Therefore, Mr. Beeton must have been the happiest and most comfortable man. But why should Mr. Beeton be happier and more comfortable than my Frank? From the hour I read that I determined that he shouldn't be--and he won't be.'
'And he isn't.'
'Oh, you think so. But then you know nothing about it. You think it right because I do it. But if you were visiting Mrs. Beeton, you would soon see the difference.'
'What an awkward trick you have of always sitting in a window,' said Frank, after an interval. 'I'll swear that the wise Mrs. Beeton never advocates that--with half a dozen other windows within point- blank range.'
'Well, then, you shouldn't do it.'
'Well, then, you shouldn't be so nice.'
'You really still think that I am nice?'
'Fishing!'
'After all these months?'
'Nicer and nicer every day.'
'Not a bit tired?'
'You blessing! When I am tired of you, I shall be tired of life.'
'How wonderful it all seems!'
'Does it not?'
'To think of that first day at the tennis-party. "I hope you are not a very good player, Mr. Crosse!"--"No, Miss Selby, but I shall be happy to make one in a set." That's how we began. And now!'
'Yes, it is wonderful.'
'And at dinner afterwards. "Do you like Irving's acting?"--"Yes, I think that he is a great genius." How formal and precise we were! And now I sit curling your hair in a bedroom window.'
'It DOES seem funny. But I suppose, if you come to think of it, something of the same kind must have happened to one or two people before.'
'But never quite like us.'
'Oh no, never quite like us. But with a kind of family resemblance, you know. Married people do usually end by knowing each other a little better than on the first day they met.'
'What DID you think of me, Frank?'
'I've told you often.'
'Well, tell me again.'
'What's the use when you know?'
'But I like to hear.'
'Well, it's just spoiling you.'
'I love to be spoiled.'
'Well, then, I thought to myself--If I can only have that woman for my own, I believe I will do something in life yet.