"Then, of course, you'll never marry," Patty ventured. "You wouldn't want a companion who couldn't understand you."
"Oh! I may join 'the noble army of martyrs,'" he answered in the same bantering tone he had been using. "Every man will be ruled by some women; and with a wife his resistance would be a trifle less restrained, you see."
"I have heard it said," she answered, "that, as love increased, good manners decreased; but I never made such an application of it."
"Of course," he began, "having a legal mind, I regard a wife as a piece of personal property, and"—
"There!" she interrupted. "It is perfectly maddening to hear you talk in that way about women. I hate it."
"I'm sure I don't mean any disrespect," he answered soberly. "I should have married long ago, had I been able."
"Whom would you have married?" she demanded. "You speak as if you had only to make your selection, and any girl would be glad of the chance to take you."
"That is because I think so highly of the penetration of your sex," he retorted, with a return to his light manner; adding, with some bitterness, "but, when a man is as poor as a church mouse, he can have as little thought of marrying, and being given in marriage, as the angels in heaven."
"Don't be profane. You have your profession."