March told his wife of the idyllic mood in which he had left Fulkerson at the widow's door, and she said he must be in love.
“Why, of course! I wonder I didn't think of that. But Fulkerson is such an impartial admirer of the whole sex that you can't think of his liking one more than another. I don't know that he showed any unjust partiality, though, in his talk of 'those girls,' as he called them. And I always rather fancied that Mrs. Mandel—he's done so much for her, you know; and she is such a well-balanced, well-preserved person, and so lady-like and correct——”
“Fulkerson had the word for her: academic. She's everything that instruction and discipline can make of a woman; but I shouldn't think they could make enough of her to be in love with.”
“Well, I don't know. The academic has its charm. There are moods in which I could imagine myself in love with an academic person. That regularity of line; that reasoned strictness of contour; that neatness of pose; that slightly conventional but harmonious grouping of the emotions and morals—you can see how it would have its charm, the Wedgwood in human nature? I wonder where Mrs. Mandel keeps her urn and her willow.”
“I should think she might have use for them in that family, poor thing!” said Mrs. March.
“Ah, that reminds me,” said her husband, “that we had another talk with the old gentleman, this afternoon, about Fulkerson's literary, artistic, and advertising orgie, and it's postponed till October.”
“The later the better, I should think,” said Mrs. March, who did not really think about it at all, but whom the date fixed for it caused to think of the intervening time. “We have got to consider what we will do about the summer, before long, Basil.”
“Oh, not yet, not yet,” he pleaded; with that man's willingness to abide in the present, which is so trying to a woman. “It's only the end of April.”
“It will be the end of June before we know. And these people wanting the Boston house another year complicates it. We can't spend the summer there, as we planned.”
“They oughtn't to have offered us an increased rent; they have taken an advantage of us.”