“I think it can,” said the Major emphatically. “A slovenly woman is an eyesore and creates discord and discomfort by her very appearance. She is a walking offence. And when slovenliness is combined with obstinacy,—by Jove, Letty!—I tell you pigs going the wrong way home are easy driving compared to Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir!”
“Yes, I know!” and for a moment Miss Leslie’s even brows puckered in a little vexed line. “And her obstinacy is of such a strange kind,—all about the merest trifles! She argues on the question of a teacup or a duster to the extreme verge of silliness, but in important matters, such as the health or well-being of her husband—or of Boy—she lets everything go to pieces without a word of protest!”
“Delightful creature!” murmured the Major, sipping his glass of port wine with a relish: they were at dessert, and he was very comfortable,—pleased with the elegance of the table, which glistened with old silver, delicate glass, and tastefully arranged flowers,—and still more pleased with the grace and kindness of his gentle hostess,—“I remember her before Jim married her. A handsome large creature with a slow smile,—one of those smiles which begin in the exact middle of the lips, spread to the corners and gradually widen all over the face,—an indiarubber smile I call it,—but the men who took to her in her young days used to rave over her smile, and one idiot said she had ‘magnificent maternal brows like the Niobe in Florence.’ Good old Niobe! Yes, Letty,—there are a certain set of fellows who always lose their heads on large women,—the larger the better, give you my word! They never consider that the large girl will become a larger matron, and unless attacked by a wasting disease (which heaven forfend) will naturally grow larger every year. And I tell you, Letty, there is nothing in the world that kills a romantic passion so surely and hopelessly as Fat! Ah, you may laugh!—but it is a painful truth. Poetry—moonlight—music—kisses—all that pleasant stuff and nonsense melt before Fat. I have never met a man yet who was in love with a fat, really fat woman! And if a slim girl marries and gets fat in the years to come, her husband, poor chap, may deplore it,—deeply deplore it—but it’s very distressing—he cannot help it—his romance dies under it. Dies utterly! Ah! We’re weak creatures, we men, we cannot stand Fat. We like plumpness,—oh yes! We like round rosy curves and dimples, but not actual Fat. Now, Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir will become—indeed has become Fat.”
“Dear me!” and Miss Leslie laughed, “you really are quite eloquent, Dick! I never heard you go on in this way before. Poor Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir! She really has no alternative——”
“No alternative but to become Fat?” enquired the Major, solemnly glaring over his port wine.
“Now you know I don’t mean it in that way,” laughed Miss Leslie. “You really are incorrigible! What I wished to point out was, that when a woman finds that her husband doesn’t care a bit how she looks or what she wears, she is apt to become careless.”
“It doesn’t follow that because a man is a churl a woman should lose her self-respect,” said the Major. “Surely she should take a pride in being clean and looking as well as she can for her own sake. Then in this particular case there is Boy.”
“Yes—there is Boy,” agreed Miss Letty meditatively. “And he certainly does notice things.”
“Notice things? I should think he does! He is always noticing. He notices his mother’s untidiness, and he notices his father’s disgracefulness. If I were Jim D’Arcy-Muir I should be ashamed to meet that little chap’s eyes.”