"By the way, my dear, I made a little mistake this morning, and gave you the wrong amount of money. I knew you would understand it."
Well, when we were inside our rooms, with the door shut, I leaned up against the wall. Edgar saw there was something terrible the matter, and he looked quite pale and said: "What is it?"
I was waiting for him to say: "You haven't spent all the money!" and kept thinking to myself very hard--"Men always forgive things when they are just married."
Finally, I said, "Edgar, how much money have you?" And then he stared at me. He laughed, and said: "How mercenary shopping expeditions do make women!"
I thought I should drop down in one minute more, and hoped that I should die. I asked if he had enough to settle our bill and get out of town. He said afterward that he thought I had suddenly developed a propensity for shoplifting, and had been discovered, and that he would have to smuggle me out of the city.
He looked very serious though when I asked the question, and said: "Certainly, dear. We will not stay a moment longer than you wish to." He asked what had happened. I managed to gasp that I had spent all the money. He looked puzzled and said: "Well, go on. What is the matter?" and I repeated that I had spent all the money. It seemed heartless for him to torture me by making me repeat it.
He looked still more puzzled, and said: "Yes, well, what about it?" I said: "And there's a--a balance--a trifle."
He answered: "Of course-well?" And then--I don't know what happened then. I was sobbing, and Edgar kept frantically pouring cologne over me, and kissing me and saying: "Don't cry, for heaven's sake, Helen," and by degrees he managed to understand the situation, and before I knew it he was lying back in a chair fairly shouting with laughter, and my hair was dripping wet, and I felt as though I had passed through the resurrection, and found myself on the right side.
I finally found that there was no mistake, except that I had not spent the money for the right things; that I was supposed to have purchased all the little things like gloves and shoes and hats and a hundred other trifles with that, and that this frightful bill was to have been sent in to Edgar or me, beside, and settled then.