“Very likely you do,” said his wife with impatience, “because your mind has a squint, and you get amusement out of odd people; but every one has not your taste for the tiresome. He is enough to devastate a dinner table; do you remember that escapade of his last year?”
“You mean when he corrected you about the length of the American passage, and gave the sailings of the Atlantic liners since '80,” and Leslie lay back to enjoy the past: “it seemed to me most instructive, and every one gave up conversation to listen.”
“Because no one could do anything else with that voice booming through the room. I can still hear him: 'the Columba six days, four hours, five minutes.' Then I rose and delivered the table.”
“It was only human to be a little nettled by his accuracy; but you ought not to have retreated so soon, for he gave the express trains of England a little later, and hinted at the American lines. One might almost call such a memory genius.”
“Which is often another name for idiocy, John. Some one was telling me yesterday that quiet, steady men rush out of the room at the sound of his voice, and their wives have to tell all sorts of falsehoods about their absence.
“Trixy is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and it would be a shame to pass her over; but I will not have her husband on any account.”
“Perhaps you are right as a hostess; it is a little hard for a frivolous circle to live up to Marsden, and I hear that he has got up the temperatures of the health resorts; it's a large subject, and lends itself to detail.”
“It will not be given in this house. What Trixy must endure with that man! he's simply possessed by a didactic devil, and ought never to have married. Statistics don't amount to cruelty, I suppose, as a ground of divorce?”
“Hardly as yet; by-and-bye incompatibility in politics or fiction will be admitted; but how do you know, Florence, that Mrs. Marsden does not appreciate her husband? You never can tell what a woman sees in a man. Perhaps this woman hungers for statistics as a make-weight She is very amusing, but a trifle shallow, don't you think?”
“She used to be the brightest and most charming girl in our set, and I have always believed that she was married to Mr. Marsden by her people. Trixy has six hundred a year settled on her, and they were afraid of fortune-hunters. Mothers are apt to feel that a girl is safe with a man of the Marsden type, and that nothing more can be desired.”