“Why, my dear, won’t you go to housekeeping with me?”
“Certainly not, in this house,” she answered, with a flourish.
This announcement was very startling to me. It was appalling to think that I had expended fifteen hundred in preparing a cage which the bird refused to occupy. Intensely as I loved, adored Lilian, I could not help seeing that she was developing a trait of character which I did not like. But I was a politic man, and seeing how useless it was to attempt to argue the matter while she was in her present frame of mind, I had to keep still. We left the house and walked home. For the first time since we were married she declined to take my arm, and I began to be very miserable. Somehow it seemed to me that the meeker I was, and the more I deprecated her wrath, the greater became her objection to the house.
“What shall I say to dear ma?” demanded Lilian, after she had thrown off her things.
“My dear, you need not say a word to her. I will do all this unpleasant business myself,” I replied. “You can lay all the blame upon me. I will tell her that we are going to our new house to-morrow.”
“You needn’t tell her any such thing, for I am not.”
Before we had proceeded any farther with the discussion Mrs. Oliphant entered the room. The battle was imminent.