Fanny Fern - Fern Leaves from Fanny's Port-folio.

Walter stood with his finger on the latch. He had at all times a nervous shrinking from sickness – a fastidious horror of what he termed “disagreeables.” He half repented that he had suffered a woman’s tears to unsettle his purpose. Perhaps Harry would reproach him. (His own conscience was prompter to that thought.) There he stood, irresolutely twirling Mary’s lovely flowers in his nervous grasp.

If Harry should reproach him!

Slowly he opened the door. The flowers fell from his hand! Was that attenuated, stiffened form his own, warm-hearted, bright-eyed, gallant young brother?

“Reproach?”

Oh, Walter, there is no “reproach” like that passionless upturned face; no words so crushing as the silence of those breathless lips; no misery like the thought that those we have injured are forever blind to our gushing tears, and deaf to our sobs of repentance.

Well, yes – rather curious; there are a great many curious things in this world. Curious, your husband always perceives that you are “sitting in a draft,” whenever one of your old lovers approaches you in a concert room; curious he insists upon knowing who gave you that pretty gold ring on your little finger; curious that you can never open a package of old letters, without having his married eyes peeping over your shoulder; curious he never allows you to ride on horseback, though everybody says you have just the figure for it; curious he always sends his partner on all the little business trips of the firm; curious such an ugly frown comes over his face when he sees certain cabalistic marks in a masculine hand, in the margin of your favorite poet; curious that he will not let you name your youngest boy Harry, unless you tell him your confidential reasons; curious he is always most gracious to the most uninteresting men who visit the house; and very curious, and decidedly disagreeable, that whenever you ask him for money, he is so busy reading the newspaper that he can’t hear you.

“Whom did you say wished to see me, Bridget?”

The broad-faced Irish girl handed her mistress a card.

“‘Mrs. John Hunter!’ was there ever anything so unfortunate? had she called on any other day in the week, I should have been prepared to receive her, but of a ‘washing day,’ when nothing but a calico wrapper stands Master George’s clawings and climbings; when the nursery maid is in the kitchen, and the baby on my hands for the day; when my ‘Honiton collar’ is in soak, the parlor window curtains in the wash-tub, and the dimensions of the whole family, big and little, are flapping on the clothes-line, displaying their rents and patches in full view of the parlor windows! Was there ever anything so unfortunate? What could induce Mrs. John Hunter to call on a washing day?”

But what was “washing day” to Mrs. John Hunter, who lived in St. John’s Square, kept four servants, and patronized a laundry? What did she know of Mondays’ picked up dinners and littered parlors, cluttered china closet, and untidied nurseries? Mrs. John Hunter, who came down to breakfast every morning in a fawn-colored silk morning dress, trimmed with cherry, over an elaborately embroidered white skirt; in a cobweb lace cap, silk stockings, and the daintiest of Parisian toilette slippers; how could she see the necessity of going down cellar, after breakfast, to see if the pork was under brine, the pickle jar covered, and the preserves unfermented? What did she know about washing up breakfast-cups, polishing the silver sugar bowl, filling the astral lamp, counting up the silver forks and spoons, or mending that little threadbare place in the carpet, that would soon widen into an ugly rent, if neglected? What did she know about washing children’s faces for school, or finding their missing mittens, or seeing that Webster’s spelling book and a big apple were safely stowed away in their satchels? How did she (whose family broadcloth the tailor mended) know that Monday was always the day when husbands threw their coats into wives’ lap “for just one stitch,” (which translated, means new sleeve-linings, new facings for the flaps, a new set of buttons down the front, and a general resuscitation of dilapidated button-holes.) How did she know that the baby always got up a fit of colic on washing days, and made it a point to dispense with its usual forenoon nap? – that all the collectors for benevolent societies, and bores in general, preferred it to any other day in the calendar? – that school teachers always selected it to ferule children for sneezing without permission – that milkmen never could spare you, on that day, your usual share of milk by two quarts – that the coal, potatoes, starch, soap, molasses, and vinegar always gave out on Monday – that “the minister” always selected it for his annual call, and country cousins for a “protracted meeting?” How should the patrician, Mrs. John Hunter, know all that?

There she sat in the parlor taking notes, after the usual fashion of lady callers, while Mrs. John Smith hurriedly tied on her bonnet, to hide her disheveled tresses, threw on a shawl, and made her appearance in the parlor as if “just returned from a walk.”

How their tongues ran! how fashions and gossip were discussed; how Mrs. Smith admired Mrs. Hunter’s new dress hat; how the latter lady advised Mrs. Smith to “insist on her husband’s moving from such an undesirable neighborhood into a more aristocratic locality;” and how Mrs. Smith wondered that the idea had never struck her before; and how Mrs. Hunter told her that of course Mr. Smith would refuse at first, but that she must either worry him into it, or seize upon some moment of conjugal weakness to extort a binding promise from him to that effect; and how the little wife blushed to find herself conniving at this feminine piece of diabolism.

Mrs. John Smith’s husband commenced life in a provision store. He was well acquainted with cleavers, white aprons, and spare-ribs – was on hand early and late to attend to business – trusted nobody – lived within his income, and consequently made money.

Miss Mary Wood kept a dressmaker’s establishment just over the way. Very industriously she sat through the long summer days, drooping her pretty golden ringlets over that never-ending succession of dresses. Patiently she “took in,” and “let out,” bias-ed, flounced, tucked, gathered and plaited, at the weathercock option of her customers. Uneasily she leaned her head against her little window at sundown, and earnestly Mr. John Smith wished he could reprieve forever from such drudgery those taper little fingers. Very tempting was the little basket of early strawberries, covered with fresh green leaves, that went across the way to her one bright summer morning – and as red as the strawberries, and quite as tempting, looked Miss Mary’s cheek to Mr. John Smith, as she sat at the window, reading the little billet-doux which he slily tucked into one corner.

The milkman wondered why Mr. Smith had grown so particular about the flowers in the bouquets his little grand-daughter plucked for sale, and why there must always be “a rose-bud in it.” Miss Rosa Violet couldn’t imagine what ailed her dressmaker, Miss Wood, (who was always so scrupulous in executing orders,) to make her boddice round, when she told her so particularly to make it pointed. The little sewing girls employed in Miss Wood’s shop were “afraid she was getting crazy,” she smiled so often to herself, broke so many needles, and made so many mistakes in settling up their accounts on pay day; and very great was their astonishment one day, after finishing a pretty bridal dress, to find that Miss Wood was to wear it herself to church the very next Sunday!