“Still, you know,” he declared lugubriously, “a fellow feels lonely—”
The confidante sighed, and flicked her light eyelashes.
“I know the feeling,” she said.
When a man has made up his mind that it is time to marry, it is foolish to abandon the plan because one woman out of the teeming millions in the land refuses to become his wife. This, at least, was Francis Manning’s seasoned decision, and it was emphasised by the announcement of Lilith Wastneys’ wedding, which appeared in the newspapers exactly three months after her refusal of himself. Whatever sentimental hankerings he might have cherished for Lilith the maid, it was clearly out of place to cast another thought towards the wife of Hereward Lowther. Francis had a deep respect for the conventions, and death itself could not have removed his former love to a more impassable distance. He heaved a sigh to her memory, and buried it underground.
Within a week from that day he was engaged to the confidante. It seemed the obvious thing to do, for he knew her more intimately than any other girl of his acquaintance, and owed her a debt of gratitude for her sympathy in his former affair. She was quite a nice girl, too; not pretty, but amiable and healthy, with a small income of her own which would come in usefully towards running the house. He wished her eyelashes had not been quite so white; but one could not have everything. She was a nice, affectionate girl.
The confidante accepted Francis because she was tired of living at home with a managing mamma, and wanted to start life on her own account. She liked Francis, was proud of his fine appearance, knew him to be good-tempered and honourable, and was complacently assured that they would “get on.” Far better, she said, to begin with a sensible, open-eyed liking, than a headlong passion which would wear itself out before the honeymoon was over. It was, in short, a sensible marriage between eminently sensible contracting parties. The little God of Love had no part in the ceremony, but it is only fair to mention that nobody missed him.
Mr and Mrs Manning went to Scotland for their honeymoon, and Francis played golf every day, what time his wife read novels in the veranda of the hotel. She sped him on his way with a smile, and welcomed him back with a smile to match, and if the young girls in the hotel confided in each other that they would break their hearts if their bridegrooms neglected them in such a fashion, such a thought never entered her head. She would have been bored if Francis had stayed beside her all day long. What on earth could they have found to say?
At the end of a fortnight Mr and Mrs Manning returned to a semi-detached villa in a southern suburb, and settled down to a comfortable married life.
Mr and Mrs Francis Manning spent the next ten years in peace and comfort, and humdrum happiness. They had good health, easy means, a large number of acquaintances, and three little daughters. The daughters were plain, but sturdy, and gave a minimum of trouble in the household. Francis, indeed, insisted on this point. Early in the lifetime of Maud, the eldest daughter, he had become aware of the amazing fact that nurses occasionally wished to “go out”; that, in addition, they wished to go out on the Sabbath day. This seemed to him unreasonable, and he said as much to his wife.
“But why in the name of all that’s ridiculous, Sunday? I’m at home on Sunday. Sunday’s the day when we need nurse most of all. It’s my holiday.”