"A good cook and a good provider," Lane suggested pleasantly, to keep the topic off conversational reefs.
"A husband who thinks everything you do just right!" sighed Bessie.
"Plenty of money and a few children—for appearances," some one threw in.
Isabelle remarked sagely, "A husband who knows what is best for you in the big things, and a wife who does what is best in the small ones."
"Unity of Purpose—Unity of Souls," Tom Darnell announced in his oratorical voice, with an earnestness that made the party self-conscious. His wife said nothing, and Falkner summed up cynically:—
"You've won, Lane! The American husband must be a good provider, but it doesn't follow that the wife must be a good cook. Say a good entertainer, and there you have a complete formula of matrimony: PROVIDER (Hustler, Money-getter, Liberal) and ENTERTAINER (A woman pretty, charming, social)."
"Here's to the Falkner household,—the perfect example!"
Thus the talk drifted off with a laugh into a discussion of masculine deficiencies and feminine endurances. Isabelle, looking back with the experience of after years, remembered this "puppy-dog" conversation. How young they all were and how they played with ideas! Bessie, also, remembered the occasion, with an injured feeling. On the way home that night Lane had remarked to his wife:—
"Falkner is a queer chap,—he was too personal to-night."
"I suppose it is hard on him; Bessie is rather wilful and extravagant. He looked badly to-night. And he told me he had to take an early train to examine some new work."