"Well, lots of women have to--to--manage."

"There's a limit even to management."

"I suppose there is. Very well."

"You mean I'm to have it?"

"All right."

"Thank you very much, dear," said Marie very slowly after a while.

"You don't seem in a particular hurry to say it."

"Why should I say it?"

"What! when I've just arranged to give you six pound ten--"

"To feed your daughter."

"Oh, well--"

"Anyway, I _have_ said it. I've said 'Thank you very much,'

haven't I? Do you want me to show more gratitude?"

"It beats me to think what's come over women."

They sat on either side of their hearth looking at one another in unconcealed bewilderment.

"If you cared to let me make out a budget, Osborn," she said suddenly, "I think we could arrange it all better. So much for everything, you know."

"Oh, yes, I know! I know all about it, thanks! If you want to dole out my pocket-money, my dear, I'm off.... I'm completely off it! No, thank you. I'll keep my hands on my own income."

"I only meant--"

"Women never seem satisfied," said Osborn wrathfully.

As he looked at her sitting there, thin and fair and reserved as she never used to be, with the sheen of her glossy hair almost vanished, and all of her pretty insouciance gone, he saw no more the gay girl, the wifely comrade, whom he had married. In her place sat the immemorial hag, the married man's bane, the blood-sucker, the enemy, the asker.

She had taken from him a sum equivalent to twice his weekly tobacco-money.

The sacrifice of _all_ his tobacco would not provide for that red and crumpled baby lying in its fine basket. He took that as a comparison, with no intention of sacrificing his tobacco; but it just gave one the figures involved.

As if feeling through her reserve the gist of his thoughts, she smiled.

"Poor old Osborn!" she said.

"You can stretch an income, and stretch it," said Osborn, "but it isn't eternally elastic, you know."

"_Don't_ I know it!"

"Well, all I ask you to do," said Osborn, "is to remember it."

Then life went round as before, except that a great anxiety as to meeting the weekly bills fell upon Marie. Sometimes they were a shilling up and sometimes a shilling down. The day when the greasy books fell through the letter-box into the hall was a day to add a grey hair to the brightest head.

With two babies to dress, she rose earlier; she swept and dusted and cooked quicker; she sent Osborn off to his work as punctually as before; she wheeled two infants instead of one out in the grey perambulator to the open-air market. And there her bargaining became sharp, thin and shrewish. She fought the merchants smartly, and sometimes she won and sometimes they. During the day Grannie Amber usually came in and lent a hand about the babies' bedtime. At 6.30 Osborn came home, a little peevish until after dinner. After dinner he went out again if the new baby cried or if anything went wrong. Once a quarter the demand for the rent came upon him like a fresh blow; once a month he paid the furniture instalment; once a week he gave up, like life-blood, thirty-two and sixpence to her whose palm was always ready.

"It's a gay life!" he often said with a twisted smile, "A gay life, what?"

CHAPTER XV

SURRENDER

Grannie Amber was afraid--she did not know exactly why--that, the year following the second baby's arrival, Osborn would forget Marie's birthday, and she was anxious that it should not be forgotten. Though she herself had, early in her married life, grown tired and quiet, had early learned to bargain shrewishly with the merchants of the cheaper foods and, after the first three years, had always had her birthdays forgotten; though she had been perfectly willing and ready to urge her daughter into the life domestic, upon a small income, yet regrets took her and sighs, all of perfect resignation, when she saw the darkness under Marie's eyes, when she stood by in the market and heard her hard chaffering, when she noted the worried crinkles come to stay in her brow. So that, resolving that Osborn should not forget, natural as it would have been for him, in her judgment, to do so, she trailed his wife's birthday across his path a fortnight before the actual day, wishing in her thoughtfulness to give him the chance to save from two weeks' salary for some gift.

She sewed in his presence and, as she sewed, entered into a full explanation of her work: "This little skirt, Osborn, is for Marie's birthday. I hope I'll get it done in time; there's only a fortnight, as you know."

He did not know; the fact had slipped his memory in the ceaseless dream of other liabilities due; but as he looked at Grannie Amber, and the purple silk petticoat which she was finely sewing, he assumed a perfect memory of the occasion.

He answered: "I was just going to ask Marie what she'd like for it."

"There are a lot of things she'd like," Mrs. Amber began.

That same evening, when Grannie Amber had rolled up the purple petticoat into her workbag and departed, he asked Marie, as they sat together over the fire:

"What would you like for your birthday, my dear?"

A great pleasure shone in her face as she gazed at him.

"Osborn," she stammered, "can you afford to give me a present at all?"

"I should hope so," he replied.

An eagerness, which he had not seen there for a long while, invaded her face; it was an eagerness of pleasure at his remembrance, at his wish to be kind and to give her happiness. About the gift she was not so precious; she hoped it would be small, and she said, almost reverentially:

"I'd rather you chose, dear."

"I'd been thinking," said Osborn, who had thought of it during dinner, "that you might like to be taken out. How would that do for a present?

Of course I'd like to do both--to take you out _and_ give you a swagger gift--but we know it can't be done, don't we?"

"Of course. Of course, my dear."

"You'd like to go out to dinner? And perhaps we could go somewhere after, too."

"The dinner will be enough, Osborn. Oh! it will be lovely!"