"You jealous creature! No. If I could always have you praised, I'd live in a cabin, and go about the world barefoot, like a wild Irish girl."
"You would make a very charming one."
"I used to, once, I can tell you, Valencia and I used to run about without shoes and stockings at Kilanbaggan, and you can't think how pretty and white this little foot used to look on a nice soft carpet of green moss."
"I shall write a sonnet to it."
"You may if you choose, provided you don't publish it."
"You may trust me for that. I am not one of those who anatomise their own married happiness for the edification of the whole public, and make fame, if not money, out of their own wives' hearts."
"How I should hate you, if you did! Not that I believe their fine stories about themselves. At least, I am certain it's only half the story. They have their quarrels, my dear, just as you and I have but they take care not to put them into poetry."
"Well, but who could? Whether they have a right or not to publish the poetical side of their married life, it is too much to ask them to give you the unpoetical also."
"Then they are all humbugs, and I believe, if they really love their wives so very much, they would not be at all that pains to persuade the world of it."
"You are very satirical and spiteful, ma'am."