“You showed me last night,” he said at length, “my wife, my dear wife that I love, deceiving me, and meeting a strange man who had deceived me. I think there’s no man in the world I wouldn’t rather have had show it to me.”
“I confess I know that I am not a favorite in your home, John, because I never believed wholly in your pretty little wife,” said Tackleton.
“And as you did show me, and as you saw her to such disadvantage, it is right you should know what my mind is on the subject. For it’s settled, and nothing can change it.”
Tackleton muttered a few words about its being necessary to decide, but he was overawed by the manner of his companion. Plain and unpolished as it was, there was something noble and dignified about it.
“I am a plain, rough man,” continued the carrier, “with very little to recommend me. I am not a clever man, as you very well know. I am not a young man. I loved my little Dot because I had seen her grow up from a child, in her father’s house; because I knew how precious she was; because she had been in my life for years and years.”
“I often thought that though I wasn’t good enough for her, I should make her a kind husband, and perhaps appreciate her better than another. And so it came about we were married.”
“Hah!” said Tackleton, with a shake of his head.
“I knew how much I loved her, and how happy I should be,” continued the carrier; “but I had not sufficiently considered her.”
“No,” said Tackleton. “No; you didn’t stop to think how giddy, frivolous, fickle, vain! Hah!”
“You’d better not interrupt me,” said the carrier, with some sternness, “till you understand me, which you seem far from doing.”
The toy merchant looked at him in surprise.
“I didn’t consider that I took her, at her age, with her beauty, away from her young companions and their many scenes of pleasure into my dull house and my tedious society. I didn’t consider how little suited I was to her fun and humor, and how wearisome I must be to one of her quick spirit. No! I took advantage of her hopeful nature, and I married her. I shouldn’t have done so!”
The toy merchant gazed at him without winking. Even the half-shut eye was now open.
“Heaven bless her!” said the carrier, “for the cheerful way she has tried not to let me see how it was! Heaven help me, that, in my slow mind I have not found it out before. Poor child! Poor Dot! Strange I did not realize when I have seen her eyes fill with tears on hearing of such a marriage as our own spoken of. How good and kind she has been! The thought will comfort me when I am here alone.”