Being married, they were more thrifty. They saved a large part of
her earnings. John was still spending a large part of his on
extending his business, on traveling, on entertaining prospective
clients, on making acquaintances. Sometimes she had to contribute
some of her own money to his expense accounts. That was the
fortune of war. She helped him pursue success.
"I wouldn't give up the memory of these two years," Mary used to
say, as she sat and stitched for her children, "for anything. I
shared at least a part of my husband's youth."
By sharing it, she won a certain happiness otherwise
unattainable. They had come to know each other and to help form
each other's characters and to share each other's difficulties in
the years when only there is real joy in the struggle of life.
They had not postponed their love till, with a settled income,
John could support her in comfort and they could look back like
Browning's middle-aged estranged lovers to say:
We have not sighed deep, laughed free,
Starved, feasted, despaired,--been happy.
"It used to take two to start a home in colonial days," Mary
would say. "I am really an old-fashioned woman.
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