“He makes such long calls!” she said, despairingly. “He should bring an almanac with him to know when the days go by.”
“But Harry and Philip are here all the time,” said Kate, the accustomed soother.
“Harry is quiet, and Philip keeps out of the way lately,” she answered. “But I always thought lovers the most inconvenient thing about a house. They are more troublesome than the mice, and all those people who live in the wainscot; for though the lovers make less noise, yet you have to see them.”
“A necessary evil, dear,” said Kate, with much philosophy.
“I am not sure,” said the complainant. “They might be excluded in the deed of a house, or by the terms of the lease. The next house I take, I shall say to the owner, ‘Have you a good well of water on the premises? Are you troubled with rats or lovers?’ That will settle it.”
It was true, what Aunt Jane said about Malbone. He had changed his habits a good deal. While the girls were desperately busy about the dresses, he beguiled Harry to the club, and sat on the piazza, talking sentiment and sarcasm, regardless of hearers.
“When we are young,” he would say, “we are all idealists in love. Every imaginative boy has such a passion, while his intellect is crude and his senses indifferent. It is the height of bliss. All other pleasures are not worth its pains. With older men this ecstasy of the imagination is rare; it is the senses that clutch or reason which holds.”
“Is that an improvement?” asked some juvenile listener.
“No!” said Philip, strongly. “Reason is cold and sensuality hateful; a man of any feeling must feed his imagination; there must be a woman of whom he can dream.”
“That is,” put in some more critical auditor, “whom he can love as a woman loves a man.”