"Good to Arthur! Am I not always good to him?"
"Be a little more than usually tender with him. It makes one almost cry to see such a fellow hurt like that. I can understand it, though I never had anything of it myself."
"You never had, John," said the wife leaning close upon the husband's breast as she spoke. "It all came very easily to you;—too easily perhaps."
"If any girl had ever refused me, I should have taken her at her word, I can tell you. There would have been no second 'hop' to that ball."
"Then I suppose I was right to catch it the first time?"
"I don't say how that may be."
"I was right. Oh, dear me!—Suppose I had doubted, just for once, and you had gone off. You would have tried once more;—wouldn't you?"
"You'd have gone about like a broken-winged old hen, and have softened me that way."
"And now poor Arthur has had his wing broken."
"You mustn't let on to know that it's broken, and the wing will be healed in due time. But what fools girls are!"