“Whether he or she should pay for some caramels. So you see there are bridal quarrels, and they are confessed.” “It is a pity.” “The quarrels or the telling?” “Both. But I suppose people who are low enough to quarrel would be low enough to tell.” “It doesn’t seem likely that I shall quarrel with Bert. You see we are such good friends.” “That should make a difference. Perhaps that isn’t a common situation. To be sure, you American girls are credited with inventing that idea—the idea of marrying a friend.” “Whom should we marry—our enemies? We are told to love them, but not to marry them.” [Illustration] “They once seemed to divide society for a woman into friends, enemies, and husbands. The husband was—just a husband. When a husband has been a friend—” “I see. You make marriage a sort of post-graduate course in friendship. I must tell Bert that I shall have something to add to his M. A.” “Yes,” I said, “Master of Hearts.” “I should like that better if it were not plural. It sounds too promiscuous. Bert isn’t at all promiscuous.” “Let me see—_Magister amoris_: that is scarcely definite enough either. But Bert has acquired something more important than a degree—he has acquired a detached and supplemental conscience to which he may look for a candor even greater than that of his own.” “I am to be a conscience to him, am I?” she asked. “But a proper and effective conscience, a conscience that acquires a controlling power, has, I need not tell you, a still, small voice. In this, minor managing of yours, in the process of which you will act as Bert’s detached conscience, you must be very dexterous. It has been said that the secret of being a bore is to tell everything. It is the same way with consciences. A conscience that told everything, that didn’t know when to be inaudible, would get to be—ineffective. All of which it is quite unnecessary to say to you.” “O, I don’t know!” laughed the bride. “I enjoy being warned a little. It makes it all seem excitingly difficult.” “You mean being warned a little more, for you must have been warned a great deal already.” “Yes. All of one’s friends help a little. Marriage is like a country surprise party each guest of which has been asked to ‘Please furnish Advice.’ Aunt Levina said: ‘My dear, marriage is like medicine—it isn’t so much what you take as what you believe it is going to do.’ Papa said: ‘Madge, girl, ask your mother how she hypnotized me. That is the most painless way it can possibly be done.’ Mother said simply: ‘Always be his sweetheart;’ which amounts to about the same, I suppose, as Mrs. Kansett’s counsel: ‘Make all other women seem less interesting to him than yourself.’ Major Carringward said: ‘Boss him, Madge; boss him. But never boss him when he is bossing you.’ You see it was all nice and easy. I shouldn’t have any trouble at all.”