“It looks very well,” said Hal, “and you couldn’t have a more perfect day for your début. Not that I care much for garden parties; the fresh air makes me sleepy, and there’s no concentration, as it were—as there is in a ball-room, don’t you know? But mamma decreed that the world should make your acquaintance out of doors, and that is the end of it. I wonder if you’ll manage to induce Bev to go to town for the winter.”
“I hope so! It will be horribly dull to stay here all winter, with all of you away.”
“That’s an edifying sentiment for a bride of three months. However, I agree with you. I’d go mad shut up in a country house in winter with the most fascinating man that ever breathed. And the dickens of it is, mamma always takes his part, whether he’s wrong or right. She’ll preach wifely duty to you until you’d live on a desert island to get rid of her.”
“I’ve heard her,” said Patience, gloomily.
“I wondered if that was what she was at in the library yesterday. When mamma has her chin well up and her lower lip well out I can tell at long range that she’s embracing the cause of virtue. But she tackled you rather early in the game, considering you haven’t made any notable break as yet.”
“I wouldn’t go driving with Beverly yesterday,—the sun makes my head ache,—and I’d also begged him to take me to the theatre to see Rosita, and he wouldn’t.”
“Oh, you’ll never get Bev to the theatre. We’ll go by ourselves to a matinée. However, it’s better than being a newspaper woman on several dollars a week—come now, own up?”
“I enjoyed Florida and New Orleans and Canada immensely.”
“That was a tremendous concession for Bev to make—he detests travelling. He certainly is in love; but I imagine he expects you to live on that same concession for some time to come—thinks it’s your turn to do the self-sacrificing act. Such is man. Anyhow, I’m glad it’s all turned out so comfortably, and that you are here, and that all is settled—”
“I want to ask you something. I couldn’t get it out of Beverly. Did your mother make a very violent objection to his marrying me? Of course I am a social nobody, and she must have made great plans for her only son. She didn’t say anything when she came to call; but, you see, she didn’t call until three days before the wedding, and Beverly’s and your excuses were not very good.”