A Confiscation of Property
Arthur Huntingdon discovers that his wife is planning to leave him, and take their little boy with her.
1848
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Arthur Huntingdon discovers that his wife is planning to leave him, and take their little boy with her.
1848
Queen Victoria 1837-1901
Arthur Huntingdon is drunken, unfaithful and abusive, and teaching his young son to be like him. His wife Helen has had enough, and plans to take little Arthur to America, supporting herself as an artist of some talent. Unwisely, she has committed her plans to her secret journal, and her husband has just read it.
“I’LL trouble you for your keys, my dear.’
“What keys?’
“The keys of your cabinet, desk, drawers, and whatever else you possess,’ said he, rising and holding out his hand.
“I’ve not got them,” I replied. The key of my desk, in fact, was at that moment in the lock, and the others were attached to it.
“Then you must send for them,” said he; “and if that old devil, Rachel, doesn’t immediately deliver them up, she tramps bag and baggage tomorrow.”
“She doesn’t know where they are,” I answered, quietly placing my hand upon them, and taking them from the desk, as I thought, unobserved. “I know, but I shall not give them up without a reason.”
“And I know, too,” said he, suddenly seizing my closed hand and rudely abstracting them from it. He then took up one of the candles and relighted it by thrusting it into the fire.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
Where were the keys that Arthur demanded from his wife?
Express the ideas below in a single sentence, using different words as much as possible. Do not be satisfied with the first answer you think of; think of several, and choose the best.
Helen planned to leave her husband. Arthur found out. He demanded Helen’s keys.