“The daughter of your parents can’t be anything so dreadful, even if she tries; and all young girls seem to try, you know. But you really aren’t going to be satisfied to marry Philip Hayn and be nothing but a plaything and a pretty little tease to him, are you? It’s so easy to stop at that; so many girls whom I know have ceased to grow or improve in any way after marriage. They’ve been so anxious to be cunning little things that they’ve never become even women. It makes one almost able to forgive the ancients for polygamy, to see----” “Agnes Dinon! How can you be so dreadful?” “To see wives go on year after year, persisting in being as childish as before they were married, while their husbands are acquiring better sense and taste every year.” Lucia was sober and silent for a moment; then she said,-- “Do you know, Agnes,--I wouldn’t dare to say it to any other girl,--do you know there are times when I’m positively afraid of Phil? He does know so much. I find him delightful company,--stop smiling in that astonished way, you dear old hypocrite!--I mean I find him delightful company even when he’s talking to me about things I never was much interested in. And what else is there for him to talk about? He’s never proposed, you know, and, though I can’t help seeing he is very fond of me, he doesn’t even talk about love. But it is when he and papa get together and talk about what is going on in the world that I get frightened; for he does know so much. It isn’t only I that think so, you know: papa himself says so: he says he finds it pays better to chat with Phil than to read the newspapers. Now, you know, the idea of marrying a--a sort of condensed newspaper would be just too dreadful.” “Husbands who love their wives are not likely to be condensed newspapers,--not while they are at home: but do train yourself to be able to talk to your husband of something besides the petty affairs of all of your mutual acquaintances. I have met some persons of the masculine persuasion who were so redolent of the affairs of the day as to be dreadful bores: if they wearied me in half an hour, what must their poor wives endure? But don’t imagine that men are the only sinners in this respect. There isn’t in existence a more detestable, unendurable, condensed newspaper--thank you for the expression--than the young wife who in calling and receiving calls absorbs all the small gossip and scandal of a large circle, and unloads it at night upon a husband who is too courteous to protest and too loyal, or perhaps merely too weary, to run away. I don’t wonder that a great many married men frequently spend evenings at the clubs: even the Southern slaves used to have two half-holidays a week, besides Sunday.” “Agnes Dinon! To hear you talk, one would suppose you were going to cut off your hair and write dreadful novels under a mannish name.”