“For heaven’s sake then keep quiet. She’s as common as a dressmaker’s bill.”
“Not when you know her. Besides, that has nothing to do with Francie. You couldn’t find words enough a moment ago to express that Francie’s exquisite, and now you’ll be so good as to stick to that. Come—feel it all; since you HAVE such a free mind.”
“Do you call her by her little name like that?” Mme. de Brecourt asked, giving him another cup of tea.
“Only to you. She’s perfectly simple. It’s impossible to imagine anything better. And think of the delight of having that charming object before one’s eyes—always, always! It makes a different look-out for life.”
Mme. Brecourt’s lively head tossed this argument as high as if she had carried a pair of horns. “My poor child, what are you thinking of? You can’t pick up a wife like that—the first little American that comes along. You know I hoped you wouldn’t marry at all—what a pity I think it for a man. At any rate if you expect us to like Miss—what’s her name?—Miss Fancy, all I can say is we won’t. We can’t DO that sort of thing!”
“I shall marry her then,” the young man returned, “without your leave given!”
“Very good. But if she deprives you of our approval—you’ve always had it, you’re used to it and depend on it, it’s a part of your life—you’ll hate her like poison at the end of a month.”
“I don’t care then. I shall have always had my month.”
“And she—poor thing?”
“Poor thing exactly! You’ll begin to pity her, and that will make you cultivate charity, and cultivate HER WITH it; which will then make you find out how adorable she is. Then you’ll like her, then you’ll love her, then you’ll see what a perfect sense for the right thing, the right thing for ME, I’ve had, and we shall all be happy together again.”