“And that would be the worst of the two by long odds,” exclaimed Harry aghast; “only fancy me with a wife in the shooting-season--bothering me to stay at home with her, or to drive her out in a four-wheeled arm-chair with a pair of little hopping rats of ponies, that the best whip in the three kingdoms could not screw above six miles an hour out of, if he were to flog their hides off; or, worse still, to take me boxed up in a close carriage to call upon somebody’s grandmother, and I breaking my heart all the time to be blazing away at the partridges. I know what it is--I was staying down in Leicestershire, before I went abroad, with poor Phil Anderton, as stanch a sportsman, and as thoroughly good a fellow, as ever drew trigger, before he married Lady Mirvinia Bluebas. Well, they hadn’t been coupled six months before she’d got him so tight in hand that he daren’t smoke a cigar without a special licence. The first season, she let him shoot Wednesdays and Fridays, and hunt Thursdays and Saturdays. The next year she made him sell off his guns, dogs, and horses, and carried him over to the Continent. What was the result?--why, the poor fellow became so bored and miserable, that he took to gambling, lost every farthing he had in the world at roulette, and--didn’t blow his brains out; so my lady has the pleasure of keeping him, and living herself, upon five hundred a-year pin-money.” “Verdict, served her right”--observed Hazlehurst judicially; “but you forget, my dear boy, that Anderton, though a good fellow enough in his way, was made of such yielding materials, that anybody could do what they liked with him--rather soft here,” he continued, tapping his forehead; “now you have got sterner stuff in you, and if a woman were to try it on with you in that style, it strikes me she’d find her master.” “Ah! I don’t know,” sighed Coverdale reflectively; “its easier to talk about managing women than to do it--they’ve got a way with ’em, at least the pleasant ones have, of coming over a fellow somehow, and making him fancy for the moment (it doesn’t last, mind you--and there’s the nuisance of it), that he’d rather do what they wish him, than what he wants to do himself. Then again, if a man offends you, you can quietly knock him down, and if he feels aggrieved, he can have you out (not that I admire duelling); but if you quarrel with a woman, there’s no _dernier ressort_, you can’t knock _her_ down, poor weak thing, and so you’re reduced to growl like a dog, and she to spit like a cat, and you leave off as you began, without having attained any definite result.” “I have heard of such a thing as moral force,” suggested Hazlehurst ironically.