The Argosy — page 125: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

IIo The Story of Dorothy Grape. The home in London, to which her husband conveyed her, and of which he had boasted, Dolly found to be lodgings. Lodgings re- cently engaged by him, a sitting-room and bed-room in the Black- friars Road. ‘They were over a shop, kept by one Mrs. Turk, who was their landlady. ‘‘I would not fix upon a house, dear, without you,” he said; and Dolly thanked him. All he did was right to her. She was, as he had told her she would be, happy as a cricket, though bewildered with the noisy bustle of the great town, and hardly daring to venture alone into its busy streets, more crowded than was Wor- — cester Cathedral on the Sundays Mr. Benson preached. ‘The curious elucidation at Gloucester of what her father’s fate had been was a re- lief to her mind, rather than the contrary, once she had got over its sadness ; though the still more curious doubt about her brother Tom, whispered to her by Elizabeth Deavor on her wedding morning, was rarely absent from it. But Dolly was young, Dolly was in love, and Dolly was intensely happy. Her husband took her to the theatres, to Vauxhall, and to other places of amusement ; and Dolly began to think life was going to be a golden valley into which care would never penetrate. This happy state of things changed. Mr. Mapping took to be a great deal away from home, sometimes for weeks together. He laid the fault upon his business; travellers in the wine trade had to go all over England, he said. Dolly was not unreasonable and accepted the explanation cheerfully. But something else happened now and then that was less satisfactory. Mr. Mapping would appear at home in a condition that frightened Dolly: as if he had made the mistake of tasting the wine samples himself, instead of carrying them to his customers. Never having been brought into contact with anything of the kind in her own home, she regarded it with terror and dismay. Then another phase of discomfort set in: the money seemed to erow short. Dolly could not get from her husband what was needed for their moderate expenses; which were next to nothing when he was away from home. She cried a little one day when she wanted some badly and he told her he had none to give her. Upon which, Mr. Mapping turned cross. There was no need of tears, he said: it would all come right if she did not bother. Dolly, in her secret heart, hoped he would not have to break in upon what he called their “ nest egg,” that three hundred pounds in the bank. A nest egg which, as he had more than once assured her, it was his intention to keep intact. Only in one thing had Mr. Mapping been arbitrary: he would not allow her to hold any communication with Worcester. When they first came to London, he forbade Dolly to write to any of her former friends, or to give them her address. ‘ You have no relatives there,” he said, “only a few acquaintances, and I would prefer, Dolly, that you dropped them altogether.” Of course she obeyed him: though EORMIE NOOO KS im