Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/181

 permitted Aileen to spend half his fortune or the whole of it, if she liked, was provoked into saying that he did not see that she could want any pin-money at all, she could ask him for what money she required. But here Aunt Sarah's good sense stepped in, she thought it better that young married women should have a fixed income, whatever it might be called, pin-money or allowance. They knew then what they ought to spend, and all their little charities, or any presents they wished to give, would be the fruits of their own self-denial, and she even hinted that the most devoted and liberal husbands would, after a certain term of married life, object to milliners' bills, and become possessed with an insane idea that their wives were extravagant and always asking for money. And although Colonel Hilton said it was impossible he could ever be such a brute as that, yet he thought Aunt Sarah's advice sensible, and named to her a much larger amount of pin-money than had been asked for by Mr. Leigh, "just to shew the fellow what he