There was one thing that came from our dinner at the Brindlecombes’ which I must tell you, because it is so very like this blessed husband of mine.  I happened to speak of Mrs. Brindlecombe’s pin, the wonderful one I just wrote about.  The very next day Galusha came trotting in, bubbling over with mischief and mystery like the boy he is in so many things, and handed me a jeweler’s box.  When I opened it there was a platinum brooch with a diamond in it as big—­ honestly, Lulie, I believe it was as big as my thumbnail, or two thirds as big, anyway.  This husband of mine had, so he told me, made up his mind that nobody’s wife should own a more wonderful pin than his wife owned.  “Because,” he said, “nobody else has such a wonderful wife, you know.  Dear me, no.  No, indeed.”

Well, I almost cried at first, and then I set about thinking how I could get him to change the pin and do it without hurting his feelings.  As for wearing it—­why, Lulie, I would have looked like the evening train just coming up to the depot platform.  That diamond flashed like the Gould’s Bluffs light.  The sight of it would have made Zach Bloomer feel at home.  And when I found out what it cost!  My soul and body!  Well, I used all the brains I had and strained them a little, I’m afraid, but at last I made him understand that perhaps something a tiny bit smaller would look, when I wore it in the front of my dress, a little less like a bonfire on a hill and we went back to the jewelry store together.  The upshot of it was that I have a brooch—­lots smaller, of course--and a ring, either of which is far, far too grand for a plain woman like me, and which I shall wear only on the very stateliest of state occasions and never, I think, both at the same time, and I saved Galusha a good many dollars besides.

So, you see, Lulie, that he is the same impractical, absent-minded, dear little man he was down there in East Wellmouth, even though he is such a famous scientist and discoverer.  I think I got the best salve for my conscience from knowing that, otherwise I should always feel that I never should have let him marry me.  In most respects I am not a bit the wife he should have, but I hope I am of some use in his practical affairs and that at last I can keep him from being imposed upon.  I try.  For instance, on the steamer his cap blew overboard.  I wish you could have seen the cap the ship’s steward sold him.  The thing he bought at Ras Beebe’s store was stylish and subdued compared to it.  And I wish you could have seen that steward when I got through talking to him.  Every day smooth-talking scamps, who know him by reputation, come with schemes for getting him to invest in something, or with pitiful tales about being Americans stranded far away from home.  I take care of these sharks and they don’t bite me, not often.  I told one shabby, red-nosed rascal yesterday that, so far as he was concerned, no doubt it was tough to be stranded with no way of getting to the States, as he called them; but that I hadn’t heard yet how the States felt about it.  So I help Galusha with money matters and see that he dresses as he should and eats what and when he should, and try, with Professor King, his chief assistant with the expedition, to keep his mind from worry about little things.  He seems very happy and I certainly mean to keep him so, if I can.