To do Mr. Rolfe justice, those who knew him and the partner of his bosom best would never have suspected him of trying to play any such game on Mrs. Rolfe in their courting days, still less now. He discovered during the first month of the first year of the thirty alluded to, that his Araminta was a woman of views; and he had spent the twenty-nine years and eleven months immediately preceding these observations of Mrs. Rolfe in learning just what those views were, that he might the better conform to the same.
“The i-d-e-a!” chirped Alice.
“Yes, indeed. And if Mary will be guided by me— Upon my word, Alice, aren’t we both too absurd! Has the wedding-day been fixed? If so, I have not heard of it. Before that happens, your Mr. Don, or whatever he is, will have to have a talk with me—I mean Mr. Rolfe.” (Which, as she went on to explain, was, as in all harmonious households, one and the same thing. She could not remember, in fact, when she had expressed an opinion different from Mr. Rolfe’s.)
Sly was Mr. Rolfe, they say; who always let his wife have the first say,—and then he had her just where he wanted her.
“He won’t find me,—or, rather, Mr. Rolfe,—so sentimental as to refuse to hear who he is!”
In the end our spirited matron was much mollified at learning that the Don had not been “paying court” to her daughter, and yet, at the same time, publicly slighting her. The affair had been so sudden, etc., etc. But Alice’s master-stroke was delivered when she told how the Don had fought against the avowal of his love.
Ah! they never, as we men do, get so old as quite to forget all their romance, these women!
“Honor is a good thing to begin with,” said she. “As to the church business, I think we shall be able to manage that,” she added, with a slightly influential expression about those lips which had so often carried conviction to the peace-loving bosom of the harmonious Mr. Rolfe.
“Provided, of course—” continued she.
“Oh, of course,” chimed in Alice.