Jericho, with early habits of clerkship, quickly replied—“Sixteen pounds, thirteen and fourpence a piece.”

“I have told you, Mr. Jericho, that I admire wit—but no low humour. As much wit as you please, sir, but no buffoonery. Very well”—and Mrs. Jericho rose—“I’ll write and decline the engagement.”

“You know best, my dear, of course. I’ll leave it all to you;” and Jericho resumed the paper. A brief pause; and then he added,—“I’m sure I only wish I was made of wealth; but, I can’t make money, you know; I wish I could. The expenses of this family”—

“No, no, Mr. Jericho; not of this family,” and Mrs. Jericho hissed on the pronoun: “not this.”

“My good woman,” cried Jericho, falling back in his seat with a hopeless stare, “what do you mean?”

“You know very well what I mean; and—no, no, Mr. Jericho—I am not to be deceived by such hypocrisy. I have tried to smother the dark thought as it rose; I have struggled to crush the scorpion suspicion that preys upon my peace; I have wrestled with myself to hide my sorrow from the world, that my wound”—

[Pg 43]

[Pg 43]

“Wound!” cried Jericho, striking the table; “in heaven’s name, woman, what wound?”

“That my wound might bleed inwardly”—continued the wife—“but it is impossible for me to consent to be quite a fool: no, indeed, you ask too much. Not quite a fool, Mr. Jericho.”

Let us at once explain. Let us possess the reader with the dark thought that, fitfully, would shadow the clear day of Mrs. Jericho’s life; let us at once produce upon the page the scorpion complained of.

Mrs. Jericho was so convinced that her household expenses were of such petty amount; was so assured that the family, in its various outlay, cost the head of the house next to nothing,—that when Mr. Jericho pleaded lack of means, the scorpion aforesaid, with the malice of its kind, would insinuate the cruellest, the falsest suspicion of the truth and constancy of the husband. Not, however, that Mrs. Jericho believed it: let us do her so much justice. Hence, when—to the first horror of Jericho—she hazarded an opinion that “there must be another wife and family out of doors, or where could the money go to?”—when to Jericho’s contempt, astonishment, and wrath, his honoured wife implied so withering an accusation, the good woman 

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