"Whatever else he may do," she thought, "he certainly loves me," and after a fashion he did perhaps love her. She was a pretty little creature, and her playful, coquettish ways had pleased him at first sight. He needed a wife, and when their mutual friend, who knew nothing of him save that he was a man of integrity and wealth, suggested Matty Remington, he too thought favorably of the matter, and yielding to the fascination of her soft blue eyes he had won her for his wife, pitying her, it may be, as he sat by her in the gathering twilight, and half guessed that she was homesick. And when he saw how confidingly she clung to him, he was conscious of a half-formed resolution to be to her what a husband ought to be. But Dr.
Kennedy's resolves were like the morning dew, and as the days wore on his peculiarities, one after another, were discovered by his wife, who, womanlike, tried to think that he was right and she was wrong.
In due time most of the villagers called upon her, and though they were both intelligent and refined, she did not feel altogether at ease in their presence, for the fancy she had that they regarded her as one who for some reason was entitled to their pity. And in this she was correct. They did pity her, for they remembered another gentle woman, whose brown hair had turned gray, and whose blue eyes had waxed dim beneath the withering influence of him she called her husband. She was dead, and when they saw the young, light-hearted Matty, they did not understand how she could ever have been induced to take that woman's place and wed a man of thirty-eight, and they blamed her somewhat, until they reflected that she knew nothing of him, and that her fancy was probably captivated by his dignified bearing, his manly figure, and handsome face. But these alone they knew could not make her happy, and ere she had been six weeks a wife they were not surprised that her face began to wear a weary look, as if the burden of life were hard to bear.
As far as she could she beautified the home, purchasing with her own means several little articles which the doctor called useless, though he never failed to appropriate to himself the easy chair which she had bought for the sitting room, and which when she was tired rested her so much. On the subject of curtains he was particularly obstinate. "There were blinds," he said, "and 'twas a maxim of his never to spend his money for anything unnecessary."
Still, when Matty bought them herself for the parlor, when her piano was unboxed and occupied a corner which had long been destitute of furniture, and when her marble table stood between the windows, with a fresh bouquet of flowers which John had brought, he exclaimed involuntarily, "How nice this is!" adding the next moment, lest his wife should be too much pleased, "but vastly foolish!"
In accordance with her husband's suggestion Mrs. Kennedy wrote to Janet, breaking to her as gently as possible the fact that she was not to come, but saying nothing definite concerning her new home or her own happiness as a second wife. Several weeks went by, and then an answer came.
"If you had of wanted me," wrote Janet, "I should of come, but bein' you didn't, I've went to live with Mr. Blodgett, who peddles milk, and raises butter and cheese, and who they say is worth a deal of money, and well he may be, for he's saved this forty years."
Then followed a detailed account of her household matters, occupying in all three pages of foolscap, to which was pinned a bit of paper, containing the following:
"Joel looked over my writing and said I'd left out the very thing I wanted to tell the most. We are married, me and Joel, and I only hope you are as happy with that doctor as I am with my man."
This announcement crushed at once the faint hope which Mrs. Kennedy had secretly entertained, of eventually having Janet to supply the place of Hannah, who was notoriously lazy, and never under any circumstances did anything she possibly could avoid. Dr. Kennedy did not tell his wife that he expected her to make it easy for Hannah, so she would not leave them; but he told her how industrious the late Mrs. Kennedy had been, and hinted that a true woman was not above kitchen work. The consequence of this was that Matty, who really wished to please him, became in time a very drudge, doing things which she once thought she could not do, and then without a murmur ministering to her exacting husband when he came home from visiting a patient, and declared himself "tired to death." Very still he sat while her weary little feet ran for the cool drink--the daily paper--or the morning mail; and very happy he looked when her snowy fingers combed his hair or brushed his threadbare coat; and if, perchance, she sighed amid her labor of love, his ear was deaf, and he did not hear, neither did he see how white and thin she grew as day by day went by.
