“Roger said that he didn’t like her wiping her nose through her veil!!”
Dolly flung herself at length on the couch and buried her face in the cushions, her whole body shaking convulsively with silent mirth.
“You may laugh, Dorothea, but this incident, which I have told many times, shows how fantastic, erratic, despotic, and hypercritical men generally are. You will come to your senses some time and realize that no one is likely to bear with your perversities more patiently than Arthur Wilde or Lee Wadsworth, who have both wasted a winter dangling about you.”
Dolly raised her head, patted her hair, and wiped her streaming eyes.
“I realize the dangerous obstacles between me and the altar as I never did before,”—and the girl’s voice was full of laughter. “But I should have to lock Arthur Wilde in the basement whenever professors came to dinner. I couldn’t marry Arthur’s vocabulary, mother,—I couldn’t!”
“He is a wonderful son, and a millionaire; he has three houses, four motors, and a steam yacht!”
“Sure, but that don’t ‘enthuse me,’ ‘tremenjous’ as it sounds! (I am imitating Mr. Wilde’s style of conversation.) And as for Lee Wadsworth he is bow-legged!”
“Lee’s reputation is straight at any rate, and his income all that could be desired,” responded Mrs. Valentine loftily. “I wish I could convince you, Dorothea, that there are no perfect husbands. You are looking for the impossible! Indeed, I have always found men singularly imperfect, even as friends and companions, and in a more intimate relation they leave still more to be desired. You dismissed Sir Thomas Scott because he was too dictatorial, although you knew he intended to have the family diamonds reset for you.”
“He’d have had them reset in Sheffield or Birmingham, but, anyhow, one doesn’t marry diamonds, mother.”
“One might at least make the effort, Dorothea! I notice that most of the people who disdain diamonds generally possess three garnets, two amethysts, and one Mexican opal.”