"No more I do, but still one does it. It's one of the things one does. We're not quite a law unto ourselves."
"No, but all social laws are being changed."
"Well, you can say what you please: I stick to it that you have to get married. By the mayor and by the parson. You two have been married by the mayor; but Ottilie refuses to be married at all. And I'm expected to think it natural and enlightened and I don't know what. I can't do it. I'm sorry for her sake. It's all very well: she's a great artist and can behave differently from an ordinary woman; but, if one fine day she returns to our ordinary circles, she'll find that she's made herself impossible.... How would you have friends and acquaintances gather round such a family?"
"They don't gather; and I'm glad of it. I have the most charming acquaintances in Italy, friends who ..."
"Children, you may be right. Ottilie may be right not to get married at all; and you may be right to have been married only by the mayor."
"At any rate," said Elly, "I never thought that, though there was no reception, we should have such a cosy little supper."
"And such a nice one," said Lot. "Elly, these tarts are heavenly!"
"Only we oughtn't to have sat rooting up past things," said the old gentleman. "It makes Lot's flesh creep. Look at the fellow eating tarts! It's just what your mother used to do. A baby, a regular baby!"
"Yes, I'm a baby sometimes too, but not so much as Mamma."
"And is she going to England now?"