Philip. We have been friends, Frank, for fifteen years, and I married your first cousin, but notwithstanding all that Jenny will insist now that I give up your acquaintance.
Mrs. M. No, Philip, I am not angry with Frank: I only feel sorry for him.
Miss A. So do I. Yet I am curious to know, Jenny, what he means by saying that wives' devices to keep their husbands' love are mostly dull blunders.
Beverly. I am waiting for a chance to develop my views. I know plenty of men who are absolutely loyal to their wives—faithful to the smallest obligation of married life—yet who regard their marriage as the great folly of their youth. Now, a woman's intuitions ought to be, it seems to me, so clear and unerring that she should never permit her face and voice to become unpleasant to her husband. And this effect generally comes from the absurdity of her attempts to hold him to her side: they have ended by repelling him. Now, if your sex would only remember that we are horribly fastidious, and that it is necessary to behave with good taste—
Mrs. M. Oh! oh! Monster!
Miss A. Barbarian!
Beverly. I will give you an instance. In our trip up and down the Saguenay last summer you both remember the bridal couple on board the boat?
Philip. I remember the bride, a charming creature. The young fellow could not compare with her in any qualities of cleverness or good looks.
Beverly. Perhaps not. At the same time, he was her superior in some nice points. Pretty although the bride was, and enviable as we considered his good-luck, one could not help wincing for him when this delicate, refined little creature "showed off" before the crowd of indifferent passengers. At table she put her face so close to his, and when they stood or sat together on deck she hung about him in such a way, that, as I noticed over and over, it brought the blood to his cheeks and made him ashamed to raise his eyes. Depend upon it, that young man, in spite of his infatuation, said within himself a hundred times on his wedding-journey, "Poor innocent little darling! she has no idea of the attention she attracts to us."
Mrs. M. (eagerly). Yes, she did know all about it. She was so proud of being newly married that if everyone with whom she came in contact would not allude to her position she made a point of confiding the fact that she was a bride of a week, and actually wore me out with pouring her raptures into my ears.