Ethelyn's Mistake

Ethie fairly groaned as she clasped her bracelets upon her arms and

shook down the folds of her blue silk; then after a moment she

continued: "You can talk to me, and why not to others?"

"You are my wife, Ethie, and I love you, which makes a heap of

difference," Richard said, and winding his arms around Ethie's waist he

drew her face toward his own and kissed it affectionately.

They had been three days at Saratoga when this little scene occurred

and their room was one of those miserable little apartments in the

Ainsworth block which look out upon nothing but a patch of weeds and the

rear of a church. Ethelyn did not like it at all, and liked it the less

because she felt that to some extent her husband was to blame. He ought

to have written and engaged rooms beforehand--Aunt Van Buren always did,

and Mrs. Col. Tophevie, and everybody who understood the ins and outs of

fashionable life. But Richard did not understand them. He believed in

taking what was offered to him without making a fuss, he said. He had

never been to Saratoga before, and he secretly hoped he should never

come again, for he did not enjoy those close, hot rooms and worm-eaten

furniture any better than Ethelyn did, but he accepted it with a better

grace, saying, when he first entered it, that "he could put up with

'most anything, though to be sure it was hotter than an oven."

His mode of expressing himself had never suited Ethelyn. Particular, and

even elegant in her choice of language, it grated upon her sensitive

ear, and forgetting that she had all her life heard similar expressions

in Chicopee, she charged it to the West, and Iowa was blamed for the

faults of her son more than she deserved. At Saratoga, where they met

many of her acquaintances, all of whom were anxious to see the

fastidious Ethelyn's husband, it seemed to her that he was more remiss

than ever in those little things which make up the finished gentleman,

while his peculiar expressions sometimes made every nerve quiver with

pain. The consequence of this was that Ethelyn became a very little

cross, as Richard thought, though she had never so openly attacked him

as on that day, the third after their arrival, when to her horror he

took off his coat, preparatory to a little comfort, while she was

dressing for dinner. At Ethelyn's request, however, he put it on again,

saying as he did so, that he was "sweating like a butcher," which remark

called out his wife's contemptuous inquiries concerning his habits at

home. Richard was still too much in love with his young wife to feel

very greatly irritated. In word and deed she had done her duty toward

him thus far, and he had nothing to complain of. It is true she was very

quiet and passive, and undemonstrative, never giving him back any caress

as he had seen wives do. But then he was not very demonstrative himself,

and so he excused it the more readily in her, and loved her all the

same. It amused him that a girl of twenty should presume to criticise

him, a man of thirty-two, a Judge, and a member of Congress, to whom the

Olney people paid such deference, and he bore with her at first just as

a mother would bear with the little child which assumed a

superiority over her.