Sweethearts and Wives CHAPTER 18.
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A year has passed since the incidents just detailed. We will again present Milnor and his young wife, but not as residents of Westbrook. We find them living in a modest way inBoston. One scene more, and we will leave them to fill up their allotted space in life.
It was a clear, cold winter evening, that Grace, after lighting the parlor lamp, drew up the chair before the fire, and sat down to await her husband, who was out rather later than usual. She had remained seated only a few minutes, when a slight rustling noise close by caught her ear. Quickly rising, with a smile of pleasure on her face, she turned to a cradle, snugly ensconced in a corner of the room, and lifting therefrom a dear little babe, now but a few months old, drew it to her bosom with an earnest pressure, and then kissed its soft young cheek over and over again, with a delight that only a mother can understand. While thus engaged in fondling her babe, Milnor came in.
"Oh, I'm so glad you have come at last! It has seemed a long time since the evening closed in," Grace said, tenderly leaning her head against her husband's bosom, as he drew his arm around her, and kissed first her pure lips, and then those of his sweet babe.
"I have been detained by business much later than usual," he replied. "One or two important cases which I have on hand, have required more than ordinary attention."
"While duty keeps you away — your wife will never complain," Grace said, looking him affectionately in the face.
"And nothing but duty shall ever make me a truant from my home," he said, kissing her again. "But I have some good news to tell you."
"Indeed! What is it?"
"Several important suits were decided today in favor of the Bank, which, with an unexpected punctuality in the payment of other large debts due the institution, have made the assets, after paying its whole outstanding issue, something like seventy-five percent, in favor of the stock. This will give you nearly thirty thousand dollars. The Bank will also divide something, I can't tell how much, but enough, at least, to purchase a handsome house for us."
"For your sake, I am deeply thankful," Grace said, in a subdued tone, leaning heavily against her husband, and looking up into his face with an earnest, but happy expression.
"And more for your sake than my own am I thankful, Grace," Milnor replied, their lips again meeting. "I shall again see you in that position and in that circle from which you have long been banished."
"If money alone is the passport to that circle — I desire not to step again within it. The loss of money, it seems, made my old friends forget me — made me comparatively a stranger in the city of my birth. Its recovery shall not change my relation to them. I have learned to set a different estimation upon friendship — to value it by a new standard. No, no, my husband! Never have I been so happy as during the past year. Never have I walked the streets of my native city, with a firmer step or a calmer heart, than since, under the impulse of love and duty — I returned to its well-known precincts. The neglect of old associates has not wounded me. I felt that the love of a husband was strong enough to sustain me. In his growing reputation, I felt an honest pride. In bearing his name, I have had a panoply of defense."
"How good to all is divine Providence," Milnor said, with earnestness. "Even the darker dispensations are but hidings of God's smiling face. Without the painfully-received lessons which we have learned, all the wealth you possessed would only have made us miserable; but it was taken away for a time, until we could learn truth in a severe school — and now it is restored to us at a time when we can be thankful for it, and use it as a means of usefulness to others, instead of something to pamper pride and indolence."
"And more than all that, have these lessons taught us," Grace added: "they have taught us a knowledge of ourselves — and they have taught us truly to know and to love each other. And one sweet lesson have they taught me — yet hard at first to learn — "
"What lesson was that, dear?" Milnor asked, seeing that Grace hesitated.
"To know the difference between a sweetheart — and a wife," was the blushing reply.
Their lips have nearly met again, but there is too much of this — we must drop the curtain!
THE END.
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