I know a most delightful couple: they have been married nearly twenty years, and both will assure you that an angry word has never passed between them. He calls her his “Little One,” although she must be quite six inches taller than himself, and is never tired of patting her hand or pinching her ear. They asked her once in the drawing-room—so the Little Mother tells me—her recipe for domestic bliss. She said the mistake most women made was taking men too seriously.
“They are just overgrown children, that’s all they are, poor dears,” she laughed.
There are two kinds of love: there is the love that kneels and looks upward, and the love that looks down and pats. For durability I am prepared to back the latter.
The architect had died out of young Bute; he was again a shy young man during our walk back to the cottage. My hand was on the latch when he stayed me.
“Isn’t this the back-door again, sir?” he enquired.
It was the back-door; I had not noticed it.
“Hadn’t we better go round to the front, sir, don’t you think?” he said.
“It doesn’t matter—” I began.
But he had disappeared. So I followed him, and we entered by the front. Robina was standing by the table, peeling potatoes.
“I have brought Mr. Bute back with me,” I explained. “He is going to stop the night.”