“Men always want wives who are not clever, don’t they?” Anne meditated. “So many people said that when Michael married me. Are the women in your stories clever, Mr.—Timothy?”
“Never,” asserted Mr. Timothy, solemnly—and traitorously to Doromea.
“They—they are just plain women?”
“Just plain women. That is why women never buy the magazines they’re in.”
“But men do?”
“Oh, yes—men who have married the clever ones like to remember that there are the other kind. And men who have married the other kind—your kind” (this time it was Anne who straightened the little frill at her throat)—“like to be reminded how sensibly they have done for themselves.”
“Michael does not read your stories,” said Anne, turning a sharp corner carefully. “He says he does not understand them in you.”
Timothy’s quaint twisty mouth grew twistier for a moment. Then he said, “That is because he does not understand me in them—or you, or anybody else one sees day after day—and never sees at all.”
“One doesn’t see you day after day,” objected Anne. “If one never saw you at all, though, one would always be sure that one had—that one had wanted to.” She looked up at his glasses without coquetry. “Doromea and Michael have talked a great deal about you.”
Timothy groaned. “And said clever things about me, I suppose—epigrams?” He waited, as for the worst.