"I don't quite like the man."
"I cannot see what you have against him, unless it be that he was not born in the county, and you don't know his whole pedigree."
Mrs. Bergan did not answer. She knew her dislike to be a case of spontaneous generation, and not at all qualified to give a lucid account of itself.
"Besides," continued her husband, "he is Bergan's particular friend."
"Is he?" asked Mrs. Bergan, innocently. "I did not know that he was anybody's friend."
"Clarissa!" exclaimed Mr. Bergan, rebukingly. "I never heard Dr. Remy speak ill of anybody, in all my acquaintance with him."
"Did you ever hear him speak well of anybody?" responded Mrs. Bergan,—"well enough, that is, to give you new interest, faith, delight, in the person of whom he spoke? On the contrary, does he not somehow manage to chill what you have?"
"I cannot say that he talks of his friends with the warm effusion of a woman," answered Mr. Bergan, sarcastically.
"But only with the cold malice of a man," retorted Mrs. Bergan. "There! a truce! He shall come, if only to prove what I have said. Next, I want to invite Mrs. Lyte and Astra."
"Very well."