'Sympathy! What about?'
'Papa wants me to marry somebodywho comes pestering me every other day.'
Josephine looked disconsolately out of the window. The weary face was eloquent of the system under which she declared herself suffering.
'Somebody you do not like?' said Hazel.
'O I like himI like him pretty well; he's rather jolly on the whole; butthat's another thing from being married, you know. I like very well to have him round,bringing me flowers and doing everything I bid him; I have made rather a slave of him, that's a fact; it's awfully ridiculous! He doesn't dare say his soul's his own, if I say it's mine, and I snub him in every other thing. But then it's another thing to go and marry him. Maybe he wouldn't like me to snub him, if I was his wife. Mamma don't dare do it to papa, I know; unless she does it on the sly.'
Hazel drew back rather coldly.
'I think it is extremely probable he would not like it,' she said. 'He is not much of a man, to stand it now.'
'Not?' cried Josephine. 'Why what is the good of a man if you can't snub him? And if a man pretends to like you, of course he'll stand anything you give him. O I like the bridle figure in the German that suits me;when I'm the driver; but the Germans are all over for this season. Aren't you awfully sorry?'
'No. And a girl ought to be ashamed to talk as you do, Josephine!'
'Now hush! You shan't snub me. I came to you for comfort. Why ought I to be ashamed to talk so? Don't you like to have your own way?'