“I didn’t do justice, or anything like it, to Claude till then,” she said. “He used to get on my nerves, too, very badly indeed. I don’t mind telling you, since I’ve told him, and we’ve laughed over that. But all that time in July, combined with something very fine that I found out he had done, made me see that what got on my nerves did not matter in the least. What mattered was Claude himself, whom I didn’t know before.”
“I love that boy,” said Uncle Alf, with unusual tenderness, “and I’m glad you do, my dear, because he deserves all the love you can give him. But I am glad you laugh at him, too. There’s no sense in not seeing the ridiculous side of people.”
“Oh yes, I laugh at him often,” said Dora. “I think he likes it. You see, he’s so dreadfully fond of me that he likes all I do.”
Uncle Alf gave a contemptuous sniff.
“Yes, he’s off his head about you,” he said. “I thought he had more sense. But there’s very little sense in anybody when you come to know them.”
“I know: it’s foolish of him,” said Dora. “I tell him so. But then I’m foolish about him. I expect if two people are foolish about each other, they can stand a lot of the other’s folly, though I expect it isn’t grammar. It is rather nice to be foolish about a man, if he happens to be your husband.”
“It seems to me you married him first, and fell in love with him afterward,” said Uncle Alf.
“That’s exactly what I did do,” said Dora softly.
“And what’s this fine thing Claude did?” asked the other. “Gave a cabman a sovereign, I suppose, and told him to keep the change. Much he’d miss it. And you thought that was devilish noble. Eh?”
“I can’t tell you what it was,” said she. “Nobody must know that.”