"Oh, we're going in for a scorcher," responded Banks, indifferently. There was a heavy gloom in his manner which was hardly to be accounted for by the temperature in which he moved, and as they closed the gate behind them and passed under the shade of the locust trees on the board walk, he turned to Ordway in an outburst which was little short of desperation.
"I don't know how it is—or whether it's just a woman's way," he said, "but I never can be sure of Milly for ten minutes at a time. A month ago I was positive that she meant to marry me in the autumn, but now I'm in a kind of blue funk about her doing it at all. She's never been the same since she went North in April."
"My dear chap, these things will vary, I suppose—though, mind you, I make no claim to exact knowledge of the sex."
"It isn't the sex," said Banks, "it's Milly."
"Well, I certainly can't claim any particular knowledge of Milly. It would be rather presumptuous if I did, considering I've only seen her about a dozen times—mostly at a distance."
"I wish you knew her better, perhaps you could help me," returned Banks in a voice of melancholy. "To save the life of me I don't see how it is—I've done my best—I swear I've done my best—yet nothing somehow seems to suit her. She wants to make me over from the skin and even that doesn't satisfy her. When my hair is short she wants it long, and when it's long she says she wants it short. She can't stand me in coloured cravats and when I put on a black tie she calls me an undertaker. I had to leave off my turtle-dove scarf-pin and this morning," he rolled his innocent blue eyes, like pale marbles, in the direction of Ordway, "she actually got into a temper about my stockings."
"It seems to be a case for sympathy," commented Ordway seriously, "but hardly, I should say, for marriage. Imagine, my dear Banks, what a hell you'd make out of your domesticity. Suppose you give her up and bear it like a man?"
"Give her up? to what?"
"Well, to her own amiability, we'll say."
"I can't," said Banks, waving his pink bordered handkerchief before his face in an effort either to disperse the swarming blue flies or to conceal the working of his emotion. "I'd die—I'd kill myself—that's the awful part of it. The more she bangs me over the head, the more I feel that I can't live without her. Is that natural, do you s'pose?" he inquired uneasily, "or have I gone clean crazy?"