Gallipolis Journal

My Husband by Virginia F. Townsend,

My husband is a very strange man. To think how he should have grown so provoked about such a little matter as that scarlet scarf. Well, there's no use trying to drive him. I've settled that in my mind. But he can be coaxed—can't he though—and from this time henceforth shan't I know how to manage him? Still there is no denying that Mr. Adams is a very strange man.

You see it was this morning at breakfast, I said to him, "Henry, I must have one of those ten dollar scarfs at Stuarts. They are perfectly charming and will correspond so nicely with my maroon velvet cloak. I want to go out this morning and get one before they are all gone."

"Ten dollars don't grow on every bush, Adeline; and just now times are pretty hard you know," he answered in a dry careless kind of tone, which irritated me greatly. Besides I knew he could afford to get me the scarf just as well as not; perhaps my manner of requesting it did not suit his lordship.

"Gentlemen who can afford to buy satin vests at ten dollars apiece, can have no motive but penuriousness for objecting to give their wives as much for a scarf." I had glanced at the money which a few minutes before he had laid beside my plate requesting me to procure one for him; he always trusts my taste in such matters. I spoke angrily, I should have been sorry for it the next moment, if he had not answered.

"You will then attribute it to my penuriousness I suppose, when I tell you I cannot let you have another ten dollars to-day."

"Well, then, I will take this and get me the scarf. You can do without your vest this fall;" and I took up the bills and left the room, for he did not answer me.

"I need it, and must have it," I soliloquized, as I washed my tear swollen eyes and adjusted my hair for a walk down Broadway; but all the while there was a still small voice in my heart whispering, "Don't do it. Go and buy a vest for your husband," and at last, (would you believe it?) that the inner voice triumphed. I went down to the tailor's, selected a very fine vest, and brought it home.

"Here it is, Henry. I selected the color which I thought would suit you best. Isn't it rich?" I said as I unfolded the vest after dinner, for somehow my pride was all gone. I had felt so much happier since I had resolved to forego the scarf.

He did not answer me, but there was such a look of tenderness filling his dark handsome eyes, as his lips dropped to my forehead, that it was just as much as I could do to keep from crying out-right.

But I havn't told you the cream of the story yet. At night when he came home to supper, he threw a little bundle into my lap. Wondering greatly what it could be, I opened it, and there was the scarlet scarf, the very one I had set my heart on at Stuart's yesterday.

"Oh! Henry," I said, looking up and trying to thank him, my lips trembled, and then the tears dashed over my eye-lashes, and he drew my head to his heart, and smoothed down my curls, and murmured the old loving words in my ear, while I cried there a long time; but, oh! my tears were such sweet ones.

He is a strange man, my husband, but he is a noble one, too; and his heart is in its right place after all, only it is a little hard to find it sometimes; and it seems to me my heart never saw it so deeply as it does to-night—God bless him.