"I suppose you are happy. If dinners could make anyone happy you ought to be. But, tell me, Del, do you never want anything else?"
"Oh, yes. I want silk dresses and diamond brooches and the feeling that every snob in town will kow-tow as soon as my snub nose appears. And I've got them all—thank goodness! I very easily might not have, you know. There are so many others looking out for just the opportunity I seized. And every one said that Henry wasn't a marrying man. Ridiculous! As if every one wasn't a marrying man as soon as the right woman came along; the woman who made love to him unremittingly and tactfully without letting him see that she was doing it. It was an awful bore, sometimes, to make love to Henry. It had to be done so carefully. O dear, he was so surly and snubby and so scared of being hooked. But it didn't do any good: I intended to marry him and I married him—and so could you if you had any gumption!" she exclaimed, veering around and fixing Lynn with a look of intense determination.
"What? Marry Henry?"
"Not my Henry, no; but some other Henry. There are plenty of them and if you don't take them somebody else will. They all like to be admired and courted. And oh, lucky girl! Fate has dropped an ideal Henry right in your lap."
"Don't, Del! My poor lap! And as for 'ideal,' why, he has green teeth and goggly eyes."
"I am sure you are not so good-looking, yourself."
"Now, Del! Have I goggly eyes and green teeth? Let us be accurate before we are aggravating. Besides, it was horrid of me to speak of his appearance. Only his appearance is so exactly like him that it grates on me, some way."
"He is a great deal too good for you," said her friend, indignantly.
"So every one has already told me. Anything is too good for an old, ugly school-teacher, I dare say; but I don't want him, even if he is too good for me."
"Now, Lynn, we'll talk this over. I want to have the whole thing out with you."