"We'll never come again!" she cried tremulously. "We'll stay at home,
and have a supper of bread and cheese and love with it! You shan't be
taunted and sneered at by any man on earth, if he were twenty times my
father! What an angel you were, Jack, to keep quiet, and then talk as
if nothing had happened! I was choking with rage!"
"Poor darling!" said Jack Martin tenderly. "You take things too much to
heart. It's rough on you, but you must remember that it's rough on the
old man too. You are his eldest child, and the beauty of the family.
He hoped great things for you, and it is wormwood and gall to his proud
spirit to see you struggling along in cheap lodgings. We can't wonder
if he explodes occasionally. It's wonderful that he is as civil to me
as he is; he has put me down as a hopeless blunderer!"
There was a touch of bitterness in the speaker's voice, for all his
brave assumption of composure, and his wife winced at the sound. She
clung more tightly to his arm, and raised her face to his with eager
comfort.
"Don't mind what he says! Don't mind what any one says. I believe in
you. I trust you! The good times will come back again, dear, and we
will be happier than ever, because we shall know how to appreciate them.
Even if we were always poor, I'd rather have you for my husband than
the greatest millionaire in the world!"
"Thank God for my wife!" said Jack Martin solemnly.