ANTICIPATION

“I’ve been round all the sales,” said Marie, “hunting and hunting.  My feet are tired!  But I’ve got a lovely lot of things.  Look!  All this washing ribbon, a penny a yard.  And these caps—­aren’t they the last word?  Julia, aren’t they ducks?  I thought I’d have my little caps all alike, flesh-pink tulle.”

“When’ll you wear them?” asked Julia hardily.

“When do other people wear them?” retorted Marie, rather confused.

“Have you ever worn things like this?”

“Well,” said Marie, “perhaps not.  But I’ve been saving up two years for it, haven’t I?  And if a girl can’t have pretty things in her trousseau, when can she have them?”

Julia sighed and looked.  There was a little clutch at her heart, but she went on sturdily: 

“All you girls going to be married!  I don’t know what you expect!  I know what you’ll get.  You seem to think a husband’s a cross between Romeo and a fairy godmother.  Well, you’ll find it’s different.  You all imagine, when you say good-bye to your typewriter, or the showroom, or whatever line you’re in, to marry on an income not so very much bigger than your own, that you’re going to live in a palace and be waited upon ever afterwards.  You’ll have to get up early and cook Osborn’s breakfast, shan’t you, before he goes out?  And make the beds and sweep and dust?  And you’re buying pink tulle caps as if you were going to breakfast in bed every day!”

“A little housework’s nothing!  A girl can wear pretty things when she’s married, I suppose?”

“Oh, she can.”

“She ought to.  A man has a right to expect—­”

“You’ll find a man expects everything he has a right to, and a hundred per cent. more.”

“Osborn is very different from most men.”

Julia smiled, stood up, and pressed her hands over her hips to settle her skirt smoothly; she had an air of abandoning the talk as useless.  Her eyes were tired and her mouth drooped.

“It isn’t as though you knew such a great deal about men, dear,” Marie added.

“I don’t want to,” said Julia.

“Surely, you must like Osborn?”

“What does it matter whether I do or don’t, since you do?”

“I can’t think how anyone can fail to like Osborn.”

“Of course you can’t.”

“Even you must own he’s the best-tempered boy living.”

“I shan’t own anything of the kind till you’ve been married three months, and he’s had some bad dinners, and late breakfasts, and has got a bit sick of the butcher’s bill.  Then we’ll see.”

“Little things like these can’t matter between people who really love each other.  You don’t understand.”

“It’s just these little things that take the edge off.”

Marie’s mother looked in and smiled to see her girl fingering her pretty things.

“Aren’t you two nearly ready to leave the inspection and come to tea?”