'Because you can put them on a shelf and leave them there.'
'Yes, that is one great charm. It is partly what ruins life, the way people see so much of each other, till they know each other by heart, up and down—all their stories that once were funny, their pet theories, their stupid idiosyncrasies——'
'What are idiosyncrasies?
'Let me see. It is your idiosyncrasy to wish to marry; it is mine to think it too dangerous an experiment.'
'Fancy calling it an idiosyncrasy when a fellow is spoony. But I expect that is not the dictionary meaning. Well, you are all but twenty-three, and you have not been in love. You may depend, if you are not heels over head before you are twenty, you never will be. So you may as well save waiting any longer.'
The girl laughed out loud.
'Well, Ted, you are the first I have heard use inability to love as an argument for getting married. You are really very humble.'
'Oh! a fellow is always very humble when he's up to the hilt in love.'
'It is afterwards, when the fair is over, that he isn't quite so meek and beseeching.'
'Well, you wouldn't have him be a humble jackass at a distance all through? It's too much like making your dinner off peaches. Besides, a girl like you always has her own way, hand over fist, single or married; and when to that you add ever so many thousands a year——'