We had been conversing about the culinary and domestic arrangements of our future home when matrimony had made us "one flesh;" or, to use English, we had been wondering what under the canopy a good cooking stove would cost, when he asked suddenly and irrelevantly,
"And you will love me, always?"
"Of course," said I, a little impatiently; for when one is deep in a mathematical problem such a question is a little annoying.
"And you will honor me always?" he next inquired.
"As long as you deserve to be honored," I replied, with the habitual good sense of my age and sex, mentally wondering if granite-ware stewpans went with a cooking stove.
"And you will obey me?" he queried next, in a tone that plainly indicated that I'd have to. I left the mathematical problem for future solution and said, hesitatingly:
"Yes—if—I—can."
"If you can?" he said, in sternly questioning tones; and a cloud no bigger than a man's hand appeared upon the heaven of our love.
"I don't believe a woman ever lived who ever obeyed any one—God, angels, or men," I cried.
"You are a traitor. You slander your sex," he exclaimed, aghast.