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Tom’s Husband
by
“I wasn’t caring so much about getting work, myself,” he explained; “I’ve got what will carry me and my wife through; but it’ll be better for the young folks about here to work near home. My nephews are wanting something to do; they were going to Lynn next week. I don’t say but I should like to be to work in the old place again. I’ve sort of missed it, since we shut down.”
“I’m sorry I was so long in overtaking you,” said Tom, politely, to his wife. “Well, Jack, did Mrs. Wilson tell you she’s going to start the mill? You must give her all the help you can.”
“‘Deed I will,” said Mr. Towne, gallantly, without a bit of astonishment.
“I don’t know much about the business yet,” said Mrs. Wilson, who had been a little overcome at Jack Towne’s lingo of the different rooms and machinery, and who felt an overpowering sense of having a great deal before her in the next few weeks. “By the time the mill is ready, I will be ready, too,” she said, taking heart a little; and Tom, who was quick to understand her moods, could not help laughing, as he rode alongside. “We want a new barrel of flour, Tom, dear,” she said, by way of punishment for his untimely mirth.
If she lost courage in the long delay, or was disheartened at the steady call for funds, she made no sign; and after a while the mill started up, and her cares were lightened, so that she told Tom that before next pay day she would like to go to Boston for a few days, and go to the theatre, and have a frolic and a rest. She really looked pale and thin, and she said she never worked so hard in all her life; but nobody knew how happy she was, and she was so glad she had married Tom, for some men would have laughed at it.
“I laughed at it,” said Tom, meekly. “All is, if I don’t cry by and by, because I am a beggar, I shall be lucky.” But Mary looked fearlessly serene, and said that there was no danger at present.
It would have been ridiculous to expect a dividend the first year, though the Nagasaki people were pacified with difficulty. All the business letters came to Tom’s address, and everybody who was not directly concerned thought that he was the motive power of the reawakened enterprise. Sometimes business people came to the mill, and were amazed at having to confer with Mrs. Wilson, but they soon had to respect her talents and her success. She was helped by the old clerk, who had been promptly recalled and reinstated, and she certainly did capitally well. She was laughed at, as she had expected to be, and people said they should think Tom would be ashamed of himself; but it soon appeared that he was not to blame, and what reproach was offered was on the score of his wife’s oddity. There was nothing about the mill that she did not understand before very long, and at the end of the second year she declared a small dividend with great pride and triumph. And she was congratulated on her success, and every one thought of her project in a different way from the way they had thought of it in the beginning. She had singularly good fortune: at the end of the third year she was making money for herself and her friends faster than most people were, and approving letters began to come from Nagasaki. The Ashtons had been ordered to stay in that region, and it was evident that they were continually being obliged to entertain more instead of less. Their children were growing fast, too, and constantly becoming more expensive. The captain and his wife had already begun to congratulate themselves secretly that their two sons would in all probability come into possession, one day, of their uncle Tom’s handsome property.