"A great many things can happen in eight years," commented Arbuthnot.
"A great many things have happened to me," she said. "Everything has happened to me!"
"No," said Arbuthnot, in a low, rather reflective tone, and looking as he spoke not at her, but at the girl whose white dress did not fit, and who at that moment whirled rather breathlessly by the door. "No—not everything."
"I have grown from a child to a woman," she said. "I have married, I have arrived at maternal dignity. I don't see that there is anything else that could happen—at least, anything comfortable."
"No," he admitted. "I don't think there is anything comfortable."
"Well, it is very certain I don't want to try anything uncomfortable," she said. "'Happy the people whose annals are tiresome.' Montesquieu says that, and it always struck me as meaning something."
"I hope it does not mean that you consider your annals tiresome," said Arbuthnot. "How that girl does dance! This is the fifth time she has passed the door."
"I hope her partner likes it as much as she does," remarked Bertha. "And as to the annals, I have not found them tiresome at all, thank you. As we happen to have come to retrospect, I think I may say that I have rather enjoyed myself, on the whole. I have had no tremendous emotions."
"On which you may congratulate yourself," Arbuthnot put in.
"I do," she responded. "I know I should not have liked them. I have left such things to—you, for instance."