“And you don’t ever want to do anything he doesn’t wish you to do?”
“When I do, I do it without telling him about it.”
Lilian was delighted with this speech, which Annie rather regretted having made.
“I am glad you are not so superhumanly good as I was beginning to fear. Don’t you find him very dull company? He can hardly write his own name, he can’t spell a bit, and he can talk about nothing but horses and guns.”
Annie would not own that she had not enough of her husband’s company to mind it.
“I don’t want him to read when he is with me, and I haven’t asked him to spell much. And I like horses myself, though I don’t know much about them.”
“Well, your life is not so dull as mine, at any rate,” declared Lilian. “You are a married woman, and can go where you like and with whom you like; I wish I could,” she added, petulantly.
“But I have nowhere to go and no one to go with except, of course, Harry,” Annie added, hastily.
“You have got over the silly stage of newly-married life very soon,” said Lilian, amused, but rather surprised. “Now I want to go to a hundred places I can’t go to. Aunt Constantia looks down at my black gown and says, ‘Too soon, my dear, too soon!’ And she and mamma both disapprove of all the persons I like. I never was so wretched in my life—just when I am in mourning too, and want cheering dreadfully!”
“Well, you will soon be able to go out more, and then you will certainly leave off envying my quiet life.”