“That’s a long time ago,” said Nora, who probably felt that her lover should not talk to her about Lord Chatham just three weeks before their marriage.
“I don’t know that the time makes any difference.”
“Ah! but I have got something else that I want to speak about. And, Fred, you mustn’t turn up your nose at what we are all doing here—as to giving away things I mean.”
“I don’t turn up my nose at it. Haven’t I been begging of every American in Liverpool till I’m ashamed of myself?”
“I know you have been very good, and now you must be more good still—good to me specially, I mean. That isn’t being good. That’s only being foolish.” What little ceremony had led to this last assertion I need not perhaps explain. “Fred, I’m an Englishwoman today, but in a month’s time I shall be an American.”
“I hope so, Nora—heart and soul.”
“Yes; that is what I mean. Whatever is my husband’s country must be mine. And you know how well I love your country; do you not? I never run away when you talk to me about Philadelphia—do I? And you know how I admire all your institutions—my institutions, as they will be.”
“Now I know you’re going to ask some very great favour.”
“Yes, I am; and I don’t mean to be refused, Master Fred. I’m to be an American almost tomorrow, but as yet I am an Englishwoman, and I am bound to do what little I can before I leave my country. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, it’s about my wedding-clothes. It does seem stupid talking about them, I know. But I want you to let me do without them altogether. Now you’ve got the plain truth. I want to give Uncle Robert the money for his soup-kitchen, and to be married just as I am now. I do not care one straw what any other creature in the world may say about it, so long as I do not displease you.”
“I think it’s nonsense, Nora.”
“Oh, Fred, don’t say so. I have set my heart upon it. I’ll do anything for you afterwards. Indeed, for the matter of that, I’d do anything on earth for you, whether you agree or whether you do not. You know that.”
“But, Nora, you wouldn’t wish to make yourself appear foolish? How much money will you save?”
“Very nearly twenty pounds altogether.”
“Let me give you twenty pounds, so that you may leave it with your uncle by way of your two mites, as you call it.”
“No, no, certainly not. I might just as well send you the milliner’s bill, might I not?”
“I don’t see why you shouldn’t do that.”
“Ah, but I do. You wouldn’t wish me to be guilty of the pretence of giving a thing away, and then doing it out of your pocket. I have no doubt that what you were saying about the evil of promiscuous charity is quite true.” And then, as she flattered him with this wicked flattery, she looked up with her bright eyes into his face. “But now, as the things are, we must be charitable, or the people will die. I feel almost like a rat leaving a falling house, in going away at this time; and if you would postpone it—”
“Nora!”
“Then I must be like a rat, but I won’t be a rat in a white silk gown. Come now, say that you agree. I never asked you for anything before.”
“Everybody will think that you’re mad, and that I’m mad, and that we are all mad together.”
“Because I go to church in a merino dress? Well; if that makes madness, let us be mad. Oh, Fred, do not refuse me the first thing I’ve asked you! What difference will it make? Nobody will know it over in Philadelphia!”
“Then you are ashamed of it?”
“No, not ashamed. Why should I be ashamed? But one does not wish to have that sort of thing talked about by everybody.”
“And you are so strong-minded, Nora, that you do not care about finery yourself?”
“Fred, that’s ill-natured. You know very well what my feelings are. You are sharp enough to understand them without any further explanation. I do like finery, quite well enough, as you’ll find out to your cost some day. And if ever you scold me for extravagance, I shall tell you about this.”
“It’s downright Quixotism.”
“Quixotism leads to nothing, but this will lead to twenty pounds’ worth of soup—and to something else too.”
When he pressed her to explain what that something else was, she declined to speak further on the subject. She could not tell him that the satisfaction she desired was that of giving up something—of having made a sacrifice—of having thrown into the treasury her two mites—two mites off her own back, as she had said to her aunt, and out of her own mouth. He had taxed her with indifference to a woman’s usual delight in gay plumage, and had taxed her most unjustly. “He ought to know,” she said to herself, “that I should not take all this trouble about it, unless I did care for it.” But, in truth, he did understand her motive thoroughly, and half approved them. He approved the spirit of self-abandonment, but disapproved the false political economy by which, according to his light, that spirit was accompanied. “After all,” said he, “the widow would have done better to have invested her small capital in some useful trade.”
“Oh, Fred;—but never mind now. I have your consent, and now I’ve only got to talk over my aunt.”
So saying, she left her lover to turn over in his mind the first principles of that large question of charity.
“The giving of pence and halfpence, of scraps of bread and sups of soup, is, after all, but the charity of a barbarous, half-civilised race. A dog would let another dog starve before he gave him a bone, and would
