We finished breakfast and I pushed back my chair.
"Well, I must hurry and dress for church," I said, looking nonchalantly out the window, for I knew that this would be another bomb. I have always been a notorious heathen in my family circles. I usually spend Sunday morning in the woods with a book of poetry or philosophy—sometimes with two or three children from the village—but I never go to church.
The bomb exploded.
"Rufe, listen! Did you hear that? Going to church with her young man!"
"Well, it was his first request of me. I couldn't refuse it, could I?"
"Chalmers always has had a way of making people do exactly what he wishes," Rufe said, coming up to Cousin Eunice to kiss her good-by.
"I shall do as he wishes when I think it is right," I answered with some spirit, for it aroused me to think they should consider me an incipient "doormat wife." "But of course he will soon learn that I am not like his mother and Evelyn."
"God forbid that he should ever make you like them!" Cousin Eunice said, with so much fervor that I looked at her in surprise.
"You don't think that he made them—what they are?" I asked.
"I—don't know," she said, looking at me gravely. "He is masterful; but that is far from being a bad trait. I imagine that his attitude toward you will be just what you make it. Be frank and sincere with him always—just as you are with the rest of the world. And never let him make you do anything that will lower your self-respect. Many wives do not know the meaning of that word."