: Miles Murchison by Giberne Agnes - Christian life Juvenile fiction; Conduct of life Juvenile fiction; Teenage boys Juvenile fiction; England Juvenile fiction; Household employees Juvenile fiction; Accident victims Family relationships Juvenile fiction

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CHAP.

MILES MURCHISON.

A DAY'S PLEASURING. MRS. MURCHISON'S STORY.

I NEVER shall forget that day,--never! Not if I live to be a hundred years old.

Till then I hadn't known real trouble in life--worth calling trouble, I mean. Of course there were worries and bothers, like in most people's lives. Things went sometimes cross, as I suppose they must; and clothes wore out too fast, and the children would be fractious or naughty, and measles and chicken-pox had their turn, and there wasn't always money enough to get what we needed.

But still, as I say, I hadn't known real trouble in all the sixteen years I'd been married, nor in all the twenty years I'd lived at home before that. I had such a happy home in my girlhood, and Jervis had been all along such a good husband to me. I won't say he never spoke a sharp word; but then I won't say I never did neither; and if he had his faults, I had mine too. Anyhow, he worked hard and steady, and he brought home his wages regular, and he didn't spend his time nor earnings at the public-house, and we had a tidy little sum growing at the Post Office Savings Bank, and he and I were in good health, and the children were well.

We lived at Littleburgh, and my husband was foreman in the building works, and he was trusted and liked. I didn't wonder neither--I who knew him as only a wife can know her husband. Some men are trusted and liked by outside people, and their own wives could tell a mighty different tale if they chose to speak out, which most wives won't do; but it wasn't so with Jervis and me.

For some time we had gone on, without so much as a day's journeying away from home. Jervis wasn't given to gadding about, or finding his amusements anywhere and everywhere except in his own home, nor spending on pleasure what properly we'd ought to lay by for our children. And as for me, why, I had every single thing to do in the house--all the cleaning and cooking, and washing and working, and looking after the children; and that means a deal more than the men ever think. It wasn't likely I should have time for running about, leaving things to take care of themselves.

Sometimes I do wonder, when I see maidservants in nice places, with good food, and all sorts of comforts, and kind mistresses, and no cares, I do wonder when I see them in such a hurry to go and get married, and set up for themselves. Not as I'm saying a word against girls marrying, when it's right and proper for them, if it's a good sober steady man that's in question, and if he has regular work, and if there's a store laid by against a rainy day, and if the girl is fit to manage a little home and to do for her husband comfortably, and if neither of them are in too great haste; why, of course, there's no objection whatever. To have a little home of one's own sounds nice, and it ought to be nice, and it may be nice; but folks don't know beforehand what a deal of toil is wanted to keep it nice, nor how many get tired of the toil in a little while, and let it go nasty and get dirty and messy and untidy, more like to a pig-stye than a home. More especially when a lot of children come, and when one don't feel good for anything, and work never ends, morning, noon, nor night.

Well, as I say, I wonder sometimes, knowing all this. For the change from a good place to married life in a cottage, or maybe in two or three rooms, is oftentimes a change from light work to hard work, and from ease to poverty. When a girl grumbles at what she has to do in service, and wants to get married, she don't guess how much more she'll have to do, when every single thing depends on herself. Seems to me, a good husband is a gift from God, and a happy home's the same; but there's none too many of either in the world.

I wasn't in service before I married Jervis, but I was the eldest of a lot of children, and my mother made me work hard and no mistake. So much the better. It was a good training for my married life.

But I always do think to this day that Jervis and I would have been wiser, if we had waited just a few years, and had laid by more. Then, instead of only a little sum being ready when trouble came, it might have been enough to be a real help, and we shouldn't have been near so dependent on others. It is all right telling us to trust for the future; and so we ought; but all the same we've got to provide for ourselves, and not to go on in a happy-go-lucky way, just taking our pleasure, and hoping things 'll all come right somehow. That's not trust; it's laziness and selfishness. People ought to think of their children, if they should have any.

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