“Well, you see,” the perplexed little dear objected, “cook doesn’t come down much before half-past seven, and we breakfast at eight sharp, because Paul——”
“Make her,” Mrs. Beehive interposed, rolling her kid gloves into a hard ball.
“How big is your cook in her stockinged feet?” asked Polly.
“Oh, she is quite a little thing,” answered the innocent bride, “quite young, and very pleasant. But I couldn’t exactly go and fork her out of bed, could I? I shouldn’t like to.”
“Give her orders,” said Mrs. Beehive firmly, “and if she doesn’t obey them dismiss her.”
“No, no,” Polly and I almost shouted in the same breath, as we each laid a hand on an outlying knee of the bride. “Don’t do that! Never change anything but yourself,” said Polly. “Remember, dear, it is like the sun revolving round the earth—things are not what they seem. Never sack your cook, never leave your tradespeople, never be disillusioned in your friends, never divorce your husband. All the others you could get instead would be just the same, fixed and immovable like the sun. You can only shift yourself and look at them from another side——” Polly was quite breathless.
“Only the sun does move,” I said gloomily, “carrying us with it. ‘Soon will cook and I be lying each within our narrow bed,’ thank heaven!”
“You are letting your spirits run away with you, Martha,” said Mrs. Beehive, “and you are not helping Mrs.—er—at all.”
“But, then, aren’t all wives alike, too?” asked the bride, who had evidently been swallowing Polly’s metaphors whole, and feeling very uncomfortable.