Home Scenes and Home Influence Part 4

Brainard sighed faintly.

"Oh! How about your four hundred dollars?" said Anna, as if the thought had just occurred to her. "Did you get the money?"

A change was apparent in the manner of Brainard.

"No, Anna," he replied, with a.s.sumed calmness.

"Do you want it badly?"

"Yes, dear. I have four hundred dollars due in the bank to-day, and every effort to obtain the sum has failed."

"What if I lend it to you?" said the young wife, looking archly into his troubled face.

"You!" he exclaimed, quickly.

"Yes, me. Would you take it as a very great favour?"

"The greatest you could do me just at this time!"

"Very well; here is the money."

And Anna drew a purse of gold from her pocket, and held it before his eyes.

"Anna! What does this mean?"

And Brainard reached his hand to grasp the welcome treasure. But she drew it away quickly, saying, as she did so,--

"Certain conditions must go with the loan."

"Name them," was promptly answered by the husband, into whose face the suns.h.i.+ne had already come back.

"One is, that you are not to be angry with me for any thing that I have done to-day."

"What have you done?"

And Brainard glanced around the room with an awakened suspicion.

"I want your promise first."

"You have it."

"But mind you, I am in earnest," said Anna.

"So am I. Now make your confession."

"I sold the piano."

"What?"

There was an instant change in the expression of Brainard's face.

"Your promise. Remember," said Anna, in a warning voice.

"Sold the piano!"

And he walked into the next room, Anna moving by his side.

"Yes, I sold it to Mrs. Aiken for four hundred dollars. I had my old instrument brought over from father's. This is as good a piano as I want, or you either, I should think, seeing that you perceived no difference in its tones from the one I parted with. Now, take this purse, and if you don't call me the right sort of a wife you are a very strange man--that is all I have to say."

Surprise kept Brainard silent for some moments. He looked at the piano, then at his wife, and then at the purse of gold, half doubting whether all were real, or only a pleasant dream.

"You are the right sort of a wife, Anna, and no mistake," said he, at length, drawing his arm around her neck and kissing her. "You have done what I had not the courage to do, and, in the act, saved me from a world of trouble. The truth is, I never should have bought that piano. A clerk, with a salary of only a thousand dollars, is not justified in expending four hundred dollars for a piano."

"Nor in having so much costly furniture," said Anna, glancing round the room.

Brainard sighed, for the thought of two hundred dollars yet to pay flitted through his mind.

"Nor in paying three hundred dollars for rent," added Anna.

"Why do you say that?" asked Brainard.

"Because it's the truth. The fact is, George, I'm afraid we're in the wrong road for comfort."

"Perhaps we are," was the young man's constrained admission.

"Then the quicker we get into the right way the better. Don't you think so?"

"If we, are wrong, we should try to get right," said Brainard.

"It was wrong to buy that piano. This is your own admission."

"Well?"

"We are right again in that respect."

"Yes, thanks to my dear wife's good resolution and prompt action."

"It was wrong to take so costly a house," said Anna.

"I couldn't find a cheaper one that was genteel and comfortable."

"I'm sure I wouldn't ask any thing more genteel and comfortable than Mrs. Tyler's house."

"That pigeon-box!"

Brainard spoke in, a tone of contempt.

"Why, George, how you talk! It's a perfect gem of a house, well built and well finished in every part, and big enough for a family twice as large as ours. I think it far more comfortable than this great barn of a place, and would a thousand times rather live in it.

And then it is cheaper by a hundred and twenty dollars a year."