“Really?”
“I suppose your life has not been of a kind to make you very familiar with it all. Tell me what these long years have brought you?”
“Perfect happiness! Oh, Mr. Stirling—may I call you Peter?—thank you. Peter, I have the finest, noblest husband that ever lived! He is everything that is good and kind!” Mrs. D’Alloi’s face lighted up with happiness and tenderness.
“And your children?”
“We have only one. The sweetest, loveliest child you can imagine.”
“Fie, fie, Rosebud,” cried a voice from the doorway. “You shouldn’t speak of yourself so, even if it is the truth. Leave that to me. How are you, Peter, old fellow? I’d apologize for keeping you waiting, but if you’ve had Helen, there’s no occasion. Isn’t it Boileau who said that: ‘The best thing about many a man is his wife’?”
Mrs. D’Alloi beamed, but said, “It isn’t so, Peter. He’s much better than I.”
Watts laughed. “You’ll have to excuse this, old man. Will happen sometimes, even in the properest of families, if one marries an angel.”
“There, you see,” said Mrs. D’Alloi. “He just spoils me, Peter.”
“And she thrives on it, doesn’t she, Peter?” said Watts. “Isn’t she prettier even than she was in the old days?”