“Pooh,” said the lawyer a third time, a third time indicating negligibleness.

Then he got up and held out his hand.  “Well, I’ve told you,” he said.  “You wanted to know, and I’ve told you.  And I’ll tell you one thing more, Mr. Twist.  Whichever of those girls takes you, you’ll have the sweetest, prettiest wife of any man in the world except one, and that’s the man who has the luck to get the other one.  Why, sweetest and prettiest are poor words.  She’ll be the most delectable, the most—­”

Mr. Twist rose from his chair in such haste that he pushed the table crooked.  His ears flamed.

“See here,” he said very loud.  “I won’t have you talk familiarly like that about my wife.”

CHAPTER XXXVI

Wife.  The word had a remarkable effect on him.  It churned him all up.  His thoughts were a chaotic jumble, and his driving on the way home matched them.  He had at least three narrow shaves at cross streets before he got out of the town and for an entire mile afterwards he was on the wrong side of the road.  During this period, deep as he was in confused thought, he couldn’t but vaguely notice the anger on the faces of the other drivers and the variety and fury of their gesticulations, and it roused a dim wonder in him.

Wife.  How arid existence had been for him up to then in regard to the affections, how knobbly the sort of kisses he had received in Clark.  They weren’t kisses; they were disapproving pecks.  Always disapproving.  Always as if he hadn’t done enough, or been enough, or was suspected of not going to do or be enough.

His wife.  Mr. Twist dreadfully longed to kiss somebody,—­somebody kind and soft, who would let herself be adored.  She needn’t even love him,—­he knew he wasn’t the sort of man to set passion alight; she need only be kind, and a little fond of him, and let him love her, and be his very own.

His own little wife.  How sweet.  How almost painfully sweet.  Yes.  But the Annas....

When he thought of the Annas, Mr. Twist went damp.  He might propose—­indeed, everything pointed to his simply having got to—­but wouldn’t they very quickly dispose?  And then what?  That lawyer seemed to think all he had to do was to marry them right away; not them, of course,—­one; but they were so very plural in his mind.  Funny man, thought Mr. Twist; funny man,—­yet otherwise so sagacious.  It is true he need only propose to one of them, for which he thanked God, but he could imagine what that one, and what the other one too, who would be sure to be somewhere quite near would ... no, he couldn’t imagine; he preferred not to imagine.

Mr. Twist’s dampness increased, and a passing car got his mud-guard.  It was a big car which crackled with language as it whizzed on its way, and Mr. Twist, slewed by the impact half across the road, then perceived on which side he had been driving.