After a long pause my wife said, in a stage whisper: "I suppose it is his way of showing that he is 'boss,' as the boys say—the final appeal in his own household—his idea of the dignity of the masculine prerogative."
A sudden stop. I thought she expected me to say something, so I began:
"I don't know. I doubt it. It looks to me like a case of—"
"Don't! don't!" exclaimed my wife, in tragic accents "oh, don't catch it. I really couldn't live with a chronic objector. Anything else. I really believe I could stand any other phase of bullying better than that—to feel that at any minute I am liable to run against a solid wall of 'I don't agree with you!' If it were real I wouldn't mind it so much; but to hear that man 'kick,' as you say, just for the sake of asserting himself, and then come around as he does, is perfectly maddening. The very first symptom I see in you I shall look upon it as a danger signal—I'll move."
At that moment, before our quiet little laugh, at their expense, had died away, there floated out from the bedroom window of our neighbors' cottage, this refrain:
"Well, goodness knows, Margaret, I didn't want to come home. I knew it was all perfect nonsense. If you—"
My wife suddenly arose, took me by the hand and said quite seriously: "Come in the house, dear. This atmosphere is too unwholesome to endure any longer."
The next day she said to me, "Let's go to Old Point Comfort next year."
"All right," said I; "but what shall we do with the cottage? You know we hold the lease for another year, with the 'refusal' to buy."
"Rent it to your worst enemy, or, better still, get him to buy it. Just think of the exquisite revenge you could take that way. Twenty-four hours every day, for four long months each year, to know that you had him planted next door to a 'chronic kicker.' Or don't you hate anybody bad enough for that?" and my wife actually shuddered.