MONEY OF HER OWN. 
BY EMILY HEWITT LELAND. 
•‘If you persist in being so idiotic on this 
point, I can't help it. But I can help you 
making a fool of yourself, generally, and 
I will.” 
“Anton,’’ fixing her now calm eyes upon 
him, “we can never agree on this money 
question—did you know it ? And we’ve got 
a good many years before us, if we live. 
"Why can’t we have some fair and peaceful 
arrangement ?’.’ 
“We’d be peaceful enough if you’d only-” 
“Anton,” she interrupted, “is my work 
as housekeeper and nurse and seamstress 
worth anything to you V” 
A flashing thought comes to him of what 
his life would be without this little woman 
beside him, but he makes no answer—he 
doesn’t see the drift. 
“If my work is as valuable as that of Ma¬ 
ria, out there in the kitchen, pay me the 
same amount you pay her. I will agree to 
dress myself on that sum. and—I shall be 
satisfied,” drawing a long breath. 
Mr. Curtis hurls himself away from the 
table in utter despair. 
“Whoever heard of a wife—and a mo¬ 
ther—wanting to be paid like a common 
servant! No, I won’t listen to such a 
proposition! There’s something abominable 
and coarse about it! How can you think of 
it? What has come over you?” 
“It may be coarse and abominable,” an¬ 
swers the wife, slowly, “but it doesn’t seem 
half so abominable to me as b-” she 
knows that the word “begging” will be 
simply a spark in a powder-keg, so she 
keeps it back. “Will you pay me two 
dollars a week. Anton, please?” 
“No, I won’t!” 
“Very well, then! I’ll never ask you for 
money as long as I live!” 
“Very well, then; you may go without!” 
retorts Anton over his shoulder, as he stalks 
out of the room feeling like the most in¬ 
jured and persecuted of men. 
From this time a little bitterness crept 
over both hearts. Anton felt that his wife 
hadn’t that sweet and clinging dependence 
on him she ought to have, and Mrs. Nell 
could not restrain the conviction that her 
husband was just a little narrow and un¬ 
sympathetic. It required a great effort to 
tell the woman of whom she had engaged 
work that she had found it impossible to 
do any more sewing, but she did so—and 
began to think of other and less obtrusive 
ways to earn a dollar. If she could only 
write stories now—like Rose Terry Cooke 
or Rebecca, Harding Davis. She tried one 
day to weave a bit of romance on paper, 
and after two hours of hard work reviewed 
her pages, laughed until the tears came at 
her clumsy hero and impossible heroine, 
and flung them into the stove. Story-telling 
was not her forta. 
A few days afterwards she was in town 
making some purchases for the children. 
In an elegantly arranged druggist’s window 
she saw a box filled with mosses and ever¬ 
greens and holding some tiny bouquets. 
Being a lo^er of flowers, and having quite 
a nice little array of plants in her windows 
at home, she paused to admire them. One 
little bunch was composed of a single 
creamy rose-bud, surrounded by English 
violets and geranium leaves. She stepped 
inside and inquired the price: 
“Thirty cents.” 
“And do you sell many of them?” 
“Oh, yes; these have but just arrived— 
this and the basket yonder. About the 
time gentlemen go home to dinner they 
disappear rapidly.” 
Mrs. Curtis treated herself to the rosebud 
and violets and took it and a new thought 
home with her. Why should she not grow 
rosebuds and violets ? 
For days she devoted all her spare mo¬ 
ments to the duty of floral catalogues and 
guides, and gave herself so earnestly to 
the subject that she dreamed at night of 
giant rosebuds that nodded to her and 
talked ridiculous nonsense and of beds of 
sweet blue violets as large as wheat-fields. 
She must have for roses and violets, and 
also the carnations she decided to add, 
a pure, moist, sunny atmosphere, free from 
dust, not too hot through the day, and cool 
enough at night for refreshing plant- 
slumber. She must do this for the red 
spider, and that for the aphis, and the other 
for the mealy bug, and something else for 
