"Who will turn out a fourth-rate Italian barber, and I shall have to support you both. But I won't do it. You would have to help him shave."
"No, I should transform him into a leader of banditti, and we would live in princely state in the Apennines. Then we would capture you, papa, and carry you off to the mountains, and I would be your jailer, and give you nothing but turtle-soup, champagne, and kisses till you paid a ransom that would break Wall Street."
"I would not pay a cent, but stay and eat you out of house and home."
"I never expect to marry," said Edith, "but some day I am going to commence saving my money—now don't laugh, papa, for I could be economical if I once made up my mind"—and the pretty head gave a decisive little nod.
"I am going to save my money and buy a beautiful place in the country and make it as near like the garden of Eden as possible."
"Snakes will get into it as of old," was Mrs. Allen's cynical remark.
"Yes, that is woman's experience with a garden," said her husband with a mock sigh.
Popping off the cork of another bottle, he added, "I have got ahead of you, Edith. I own a place in the country, much as I dislike that kind of property. I had to take it to-day in a trade, and so am a landholder in Pushton—prospect, you see, of my becoming a rural gentleman (Squire is the title, I believe), and of exchanging stock in Wall Street for the stock of a farm. Here's to my estate of three acres with a story and a half mansion upon it! Perhaps you would rather go up there this summer than to Paris, my dear?" to his wife.
Mrs. Allen gave a contemptuous shrug as if the jest were too preposterous to be answered, but Edith cried:
"Fill my glass; I will drink to your country place. I know the cottage is a sweet rustic little box, all smothered with vines and roses like one I saw last June." Then she added in sport, "I wish you would give it to me for my birthday present. It would make such a nice porter's lodge at the entrance to my future Eden."