Troubled, worried, and unhappy as I was, I yet concealed from Mr. Smith the origin of all this ruin.  He never suspected our cheap sofa for a moment.  After I had, by slow degrees, recovered from my chagrin and disappointment, my thoughts turned, naturally, upon a disposition of the sofa.  What was to be done with it?  As to keeping it over another season, that was not to be thought of for a moment.  But, would it be right, I asked myself, to send it back to auctions and let it thus go into the possession of some housekeeper, as ignorant of its real character as I had been?  I found it very hard to reconcile my conscience to such a disposition of the sofa.  And there was still another difficulty in the way.  What excuse for parting with it could I make to Mr. Smith?  He had never suspected that article to be the origination of all the mischief and loss we had sustained.

Winter began drawing to a close, and still the sofa remained in its place, and still was I in perplexity as to what should be done with it.

“Business requires me to go to Charleston,” said Mr. Smith, one day late in February.

“How long will you be away?” was my natural enquiry.

“From ten days to two weeks,” replied Mr. Smith.

“So long as that?”

“It will hardly be possible to get home earlier than the time I have mentioned.”

“You go in the Osprey?”

“Yes.  She sails day after to-morrow.  So you will have all ready for me, if you please.”

Never before had the announcement of my husband that he had to go away on business given me pleasure.  The moment he said that he would be absent, the remedy for my difficulty suggested itself.

The very day Mr. Smith sailed in the steamer for Charleston, I sent for an upholsterer, and after explaining to him the defect connected with my sofa, directed him to have the seating all removed, and then replaced by new materials, taking particular care to thoroughly cleanse the inside of the wood work, lest the vestige of a moth should be left remaining.

All this was done, at a cost of twenty dollars.  When Mr. Smith returned, the sofa was back in its place; and he was none the wiser for the change, until some months afterwards, when, unable to keep the secret any longer, I told him the whole story.

I am pretty well cured, I think now, of bargain-buying.

CHAPTER XXII.

A PEEVISH DAY AND ITS CONSEQUENCES.

THERE are few housekeepers who have not had their sick and peevish days.  I have had mine, as the reader will see by the following story, which I some time since ventured to relate, in the third person, and which I now take the liberty of introducing into these confessions.

“It is too bad, Rachel, to put me to all this trouble; and you know I can hardly hold up my head.”

Thus spoke Mrs. Smith, in a peevish voice, to a quiet looking domestic, who had been called up from the kitchen to supply some unimportant omission in the breakfast table arrangement.