MRS. KNOWLE.  Dr. Anderson was saying, only yesterday, trying to make me more cheerful, “Why, Mrs. Knowle,” he said, “you’ll live another hundred years yet.”  “Dr. Anderson,” I said, “I don’t want to live another hundred years.  I only want to live until my dear daughter, Melisande”—­I didn’t say Sandy to him because it seemed rather familiar—­“I only want to live until my daughter Melisande is happily married to some nice, steady young man.  Do this for me, Dr. Anderson,” I said, “and I shall be your lifelong debtor.”  He promised to do his best.  It was then that he mentioned about the cushion in the small of the back after meals.  And so don’t forget to tell cook about the bread-sauce, will you, dear?

MELISANDE.  I will tell her, Mother.

MRS. KNOWLE.  That’s right.  I like a man to be interested in his food.  I hope both your husbands, Sandy and Jane, will take a proper interest in what they eat.  You will find that, after you have been married some years, and told each other everything you did and saw before you met, there isn’t really anything to talk about at meals except food.  And you must talk; I hope you will both remember that.  Nothing breaks up the home so quickly as silent meals.  Of course, breakfast doesn’t matter, because he has his paper then; and after you have said, “Is there anything in the paper, dear?” and he has said, “No,” then he doesn’t expect anything more.  I wonder sometimes why they go on printing the newspapers.  I’ve been married twenty years, and there has never been anything in the paper yet.

MELISANDE.  Oh, Mother, I hate to hear you talking about marriage like that.  Wasn’t there ever any kind of romance between you and Father?  Not even when he was wooing you?  Wasn’t there ever one magic Midsummer morning when you saw suddenly “a livelier emerald twinkle in the grass, a purer sapphire melt into the sea”?  Wasn’t there ever one passionate ecstatic moment when “once he drew with one long kiss my whole soul through my lips, as sunlight drinketh dew”?  Or did you talk about bread-sauce all the time?

JANE (eagerly).  Tell us about it, Aunt Mary.

MRS. KNOWLE.  Well, dear, there isn’t very much to tell.  I am quite sure that we never drank dew together, or anything like that, as Sandy suggests, and it wasn’t by the sea at all, it was at Surbiton.  He used to come down from London with his racquet and play tennis with us.  And then he would stay on to supper sometimes, and then after supper we would go into the garden together—­it was quite dark then, but everything smelt so beautifully, I shall always remember it—­and we talked, oh, I don’t know what about, but I knew somehow that I should marry him one day.  I don’t think he knew—­he wasn’t sure—­and then he came to a subscription dance one evening—­I think Mother, your grandmother, guessed that that was to be my great evening, because she was very particular about my dress, and I remember she sent me upstairs