"Courtesy is an effort, and cordiality is free. I must be allowed to contradict the friend that I love; but I assent,—too often falsely,—to what is said to me by a passing acquaintance. In spite of what the Scripture says, I think it is one of the greatest privileges of a brother that he may call his brother a fool."
"Shall you desire to call your husband a fool?"
"My husband!"
"He will, I suppose, be at least as dear to you as a brother?"
"I never had a brother."
"Your sister, then! It is the same, I suppose?"
"If I were to have a husband, I hope he would be the dearest to me of all. Unless he were so, he certainly would not be my husband. But between a man and his wife there does not spring up that playful, violent intimacy admitting of all liberties, which comes from early nursery associations; and then, there is the difference of sex."
"I should not like my wife to call me a fool," he said.
"I hope she may never have occasion to do so, Mr. Glascock. Marry an English wife in your own class,—as, of course, you will,—and then you will be safe."
"But I have set my heart fast on marrying an American wife," he said.