“O, pray beware,” said Mrs. Westbury, with much feeling,—“beware lest you sacrifice your happiness for a chimera! Beware how you trifle with so invaluable a treasure as the heart of a husband!”
“Pho—pho—how serious you are growing,” said Mrs. Cunningham. “Actually warning and exhorting at twenty years of age! What a preacher you will be, by the time you are forty! But now be honest, and confess that you, yourself, would prefer a ball or a party, to sitting alone here through a stupid evening with Westbury.”
“Then to speak truth,” said Julia, “I should prefer an evening at home to all the parties in the world—balls I never attend, and do not think stupidity necessary, even with no other companion than one's own husband.”
“Then why do you attend parties if you do not like them?”
“Because Mr. Westbury thinks it proper that I should.”
“And so you go to him, like miss to her papa and mamma to ask him what you must do?” said Mrs. Cunningham, laughing. “This is delightful, truly! But for my part, I cannot see why I have not as good a right to expect Edward to conform to my taste and wishes, as he has to expect me to conform to his. And so Westbury makes you go, whether you like to or not?”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Westbury. “I never expressed to him my aversion to going, not wishing him to feel as if I were making a great sacrifice, in complying with his wishes.”
“Well, that is pretty, and dutiful, and delicate,” said Mrs. Cunningham, laughing again. “But I don't set up for a pattern wife, and if Edward and I get along as well as people in general, I shall be satisfied. But to turn to something else. How do you like Miss Eldon?”
“I am not at all acquainted with her,” said Julia.
“You have met her several times,” said Mrs. Cunningham.