“But I’m not the faithless wife who enjoys confiding that she’s ‘misunderstood.’  Oh, I’m not, I’m not!

“Am I?

“At least I didn’t whisper to Guy about Will’s faults and his blindness to my remarkable soul.  I didn’t!  Matter of fact, Will probably understands me perfectly!  If only—­if he would just back me up in rousing the town.

“How many, how incredibly many wives there must be who tingle over the first Guy Pollock who smiles at them.  No!  I will not be one of that herd of yearners!  The coy virgin brides.  Yet probably if the Prince were young and dared to face life——­

“I’m not half as well oriented as that Mrs. Dillon.  So obviously adoring her dentist!  And seeing Guy only as an eccentric fogy.

“They weren’t silk, Mrs. Dillon’s stockings.  They were lisle.  Her legs are nice and slim.  But no nicer than mine.  I hate cotton tops on silk stockings. . . .  Are my ankles getting fat?  I will not have fat ankles!

“No.  I am fond of Will.  His work—­one farmer he pulls through diphtheria is worth all my yammering for a castle in Spain.  A castle with baths.

“This hat is so tight.  I must stretch it.  Guy liked it.

“There’s the house.  I’m awfully chilly.  Time to get out the fur coat.  I wonder if I’ll ever have a beaver coat?  Nutria is not the same thing!  Beaver-glossy.  Like to run my fingers over it.  Guy’s mustache like beaver.  How utterly absurd!

“I am, I am fond of Will, and——­Can’t I ever find another word than ‘fond’?

“He’s home.  He’ll think I was out late.

“Why can’t he ever remember to pull down the shades?  Cy Bogart and all the beastly boys peeping in.  But the poor dear, he’s absent-minded about minute—­minush—­whatever the word is.  He has so much worry and work, while I do nothing but jabber to Bea.

“I mustn’t forget the hominy——­”

She was flying into the hall.  Kennicott looked up from the Journal of the American Medical Society.

“Hello!  What time did you get back?” she cried.

“About nine.  You been gadding.  Here it is past eleven!” Good-natured yet not quite approving.

“Did it feel neglected?”

“Well, you didn’t remember to close the lower draft in the furnace.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.  But I don’t often forget things like that, do I?”

She dropped into his lap and (after he had jerked back his head to save his eye-glasses, and removed the glasses, and settled her in a position less cramping to his legs, and casually cleared his throat) he kissed her amiably, and remarked: 

“Nope, I must say you’re fairly good about things like that.  I wasn’t kicking.  I just meant I wouldn’t want the fire to go out on us.  Leave that draft open and the fire might burn up and go out on us.  And the nights are beginning to get pretty cold again.  Pretty cold on my drive.  I put the side-curtains up, it was so chilly.  But the generator is working all right now.”