FullReads

“The more I thought on this subject, the more troubled my mind became, and at last I believed it to be my duty to speak to Bernard, although I did not tell him all my thoughts; for I had had a good many that were not necessarily connected with hereditary diseases. I was positively amazed at the way my husband received what I told him. I had expected that perhaps he might pooh-pooh the whole thing, but he did nothing of the kind. He became very serious, and talked to me in the most earnest way.

“‘Now, Rosa,’ said he, ‘I am glad you told me about this, and I want to impress it upon your mind that you must be very careful. In the first place, you must totally give up hot spirits and water. You must not drink more than two glasses of wine, or three at the utmost, at any of your meals. When you get up in the morning you must totally abstain from drinking those mixtures that are taken by some people to give appetite for breakfast. At night you must try to do without any sort of punch or toddy to make you sleep. If you will take this advice, and restrict yourself to water and milk, and not over-rich food, I think you may reasonably expect to live longer than your grandfather did, although I cannot imagine why any one should want to live that long.’

“Of course I was angry at all this, for I saw then that he was making fun of me; and I said no more to him, for he was not in the right frame of mind to listen to me. But I did not stop thinking.

“I now became very intimate with Miss Temple. I began to like her very much, and I think she liked me. I continued to study her, and I became convinced that she was a woman to whom a very fastidious man might be attracted–I do not mean that he would fall in love with her, but that he would be perfectly satisfied with her. In fact, I summed up her character by assuring myself that in every way she was perfectly satisfactory. I have known other women who were more charming, but they all had faults; and I do not see how any one could have found fault with Miss Temple.

“One day we had taken a long walk, and were on our way home when I began to talk to her about my own affairs. I thought I knew her so well in a general way that the time had come for me to find out some things more definitely. I began in an offhand but cautious manner to talk about Bernard. I alluded to his love of outdoor sports, and mentioned that I thought it my duty frequently to speak to him in regard to the terrible consequences which might follow a false step when he was out fishing, and that I thought it necessary to repeat this advice very often, for it was my opinion he paid very little attention to it. I also made several other allusions to his indisposition to take care of himself, and remarked how very necessary it was for me to look after his health. I mentioned his great carelessness in regard to flannel, and told her that it was often quite late in the autumn before he would make any change in his clothing.

“Then I spoke of his domestic habits; and, as I saw Miss Temple seemed much interested, I talked a good deal about them. He was the most loving husband in the world, I said, and was always anxious to know what he could do for me more than he was already doing; but when we were in the city he did like to go out in the evenings, and I thought he went to his club too often. Of course, I said, I did not say anything to him about it, for I would not want him to think that I desired him to deny himself the company of other gentlemen; but the habit of club attendance was one that might grow on a man, especially a young one, and there were a good many other things that might result from it, such as excessive smoking. So I had thought it well to offer him additional inducements for spending his evenings at home, and I had begun a regular system of reading aloud. It had proved very beneficial to both of us, for I chose good, standard books; and although he sometimes went to sleep, that was to be expected, for Bernard was a hard-working man. As for myself, I liked this reading aloud very much, although at first it was rather tiresome, as I had never been used to it. Then I asked her if she liked reading aloud–it is such a good way of giving pleasure to others at the same time that you are pleasing yourself. She smiled, and said she was very fond of reading aloud.