“You are not yet twenty, Carlotta.”
“Do you think I will have them then? Oh, it would be dreadful. No one would care to have me.”
“And I? Am I thus the object of every one’s disregard?”
“Oh, you—you are a man. It is right for a man. It makes him look wise. His wife says, ‘Behold, my husband has grey hair. He has wisdom. If I am not good he will beat me. So I must obey him.”’
“She wouldn’t run off with a good-for-nothing scamp of two-and-twenty?”
“Oh, no-o,” said Carlotta. “She would not be so wicked.”
“I am glad,” said I, “that you think a sense of conjugal duty is an ineradicable element of female nature. But suppose she fell in love with the young scamp?”
“Men fall in love,” she replied sagely. “Women only fall in love in stories—Turkish stories. They love their husbands.”
“You amaze me,” said I.
“Ye-es,” said Carlotta.