"It's her affair," muttered Violet as she mounted to the kitchen to finish preparing breakfast. "It's her affair. If she chooses to work two hours on a Monday morning on an empty stomach, I can't help it." And there followed a shamed little thought: "It saves the gas."
When the breakfast tray was ready she slipped off her blue apron. At the bedroom door she set the tray down on the floor and went into the bedroom to put on the mantle which she had already worn that morning as a seamstress in bed. Before taking the tray again she called out to Elsie:
"Your breakfast's all ready for you, Elsie."
Mr. Earlforward was waiting for her at the dining-room table. He wore his overcoat. In this manner, at his instigation, they proved on chilly mornings that they could ignore the outrageous exactions of coal trusts and striking colliers.
"What's that?" demanded Henry with well-acted indifference as he observed an unusual object on the tray.
"But I don't want an egg. I never eat eggs."
"But I want you to eat this one." She smiled, cajolingly.
Useless! She was asking too much. He would not eat it.
It might be; but he would not be the one to waste it. He calmly ate his bread and margarine, and drank his tea.
"I do think it's too bad of you, Harry. You're wasting away," she protested in a half-broken voice, and added with still more emotion, daringly, defiantly: "And what's the use of a husband who doesn't eat enough, I should like to know?"
A fearful silence. Thunder seemed to rumble menacingly round the horizon; nature itself cowered. Henry blushed slightly, pulling at his beard. Then his voice, quiet, bland, soothing, sweet, inexorable:
"Up to thirty, eat as much as you can. After thirty, as much as you want. After fifty, as little as you can do with."
"No. But I eat as much as I want. I'm the only judge of how much I want. We're all different. My health is quite good."
"I prefer you to _be_ a bit stout--much. It's a good sign in a man."
"Question of taste," he said with a humorous, affectionate glance at her.
"Oh, Harry!" she exclaimed violently. "You're a funny man." Then she laughed.
The storm had dissipated itself, save in Violet's heart. She knew by instinct, by intuition, beyond any doubt, that Henry deprived himself in order to lessen the cost of housekeeping--and this although by agreement she paid half the cost out of her separate income! The fact was, Henry was just as jealous of her income as of his own. She trembled for the future. Then for safety, for relief, she yielded to him in her heart; she trusted; her hope was in the extraordinary strength of his character.