“Now you are the sort of a man, I should think, who would never get careless about your wife. You would always believe about her what you believed at first; and I dare say you would live very happily in your own house if she was a decent sort of woman. But you would have to go out into society sometimes; and the very fact that you had not got careless--as many men would, leaving their wives to produce any sort of impression they might--would make you vexed that the world could not, off-hand, value your wife as you fancy she ought to be valued. Don’t you see?” This was the answer: “Puvoket much at my rude tongue, A dish o’ brath at me he vlung, Which so incensed me to wrath, That I up an’ knack un instantly to arth, Diddle-diddle!” “As for your Princess Sheila, I firmly believe you have some romantic notion of marrying her and taking her up to London with you. If you seriously intend such a thing, I shall not argue with you. I shall praise her by the hour together, for I may have to depend on Mrs. Edward Ingram for my admission to your house. But if you only have the fancy as a fancy, consider what the result would be. You say she has never been to a school; that she has never had the companionship of a girl of her own age; that she has never read a newspaper; that she has never been out of this island; and that almost her sole society has been that of her mother, who educated her and tended her, and left her as ignorant of the real world as if she had lived all her life in a lighthouse. Goodness gracious! what a figure such a girl would cut in South Kensington!” “My dear fellow,” said Ingram at last, “don’t be absurd. You will soon see what are the relations between Sheila Mackenzie and me, and you will be satisfied. I marry her? Do you think I would take the child to London to show her its extravagance and shallow society, and break her heart with thinking of the sea, and of the rude islanders she knew, and of their hard and bitter struggle for life? No. I should not like to see my wild Highland doe shut up in one of your southern parks, among your tame fallow-deer. She would look at them askance. She would separate herself from them, and by and by she would make one wild effort to escape and kill herself. That is not the fate in store for our good little Sheila; so you need not make yourself unhappy about her or me. ‘Now all ye young men, of every persuasion, Never quarl wi’ your vather upon any occasion; For instead of being better, you’ll vind you’ll be wuss, For he’ll kick you out o’ doors, without a varden in your puss! Diddle-diddle!’” “Talking of Devonshire, how is that young American lady you met at Torquay in the Spring?” “There, now, is the sort of woman a man would be safe in marrying!” “And how?”