“My dear Mrs. Bishop,” cried Mrs. Framley, laughing, “I had no idea you could be so eloquent. I think, at one of our meetings, instead of a reading, we will have a lecture from Mrs. Bishop, entitled _The labor that we love physics pain_. You haven’t convinced me, though, because my opinions are founded on principle, and the conviction that women ought, out of self-respect and for the sake of other women, to expect that a husband should sacrifice his tastes and pleasure, and consider it his duty to amuse and entertain his wife as much as she does him, and not consider his duty done if he provides for her and treats her as well as he would a favorite horse.” “I can understand if people, man and wife, or brother and sister, begin to draw the line as to what is to be conceded and what expected, and what they do for those they love becomes a _conscious_ self-abnegation,—that life under such circumstances may be looked upon as one of self-denial; but I fancy few really are denying themselves while pleasing a loved one.” Mrs. Framley smiled. “You are the last person I should have thought romantic, but I see you are; talk to me ten years from now, my dear, and I’ll listen respectfully.” Molly thought the matter over when she was alone. Was she really in danger of spoiling Harry? She certainly had known husbands who took all the comfort of their homes just as their right, and never seemed to think they need do anything toward the family pleasure beyond paying the bills. Molly was devoted to her husband; but she was not so blinded by her love as not to see that Harry was in no way a perfect man. He was pleasure-loving only in the sense of seizing life’s enjoyments,—even his generous impulses were part of them,—and he was too fastidious for a poor man; and Molly could quite realize that he might not be a loving husband to some women just as good as she was, and yet she knew his faults were faults of temperament. How could he help it, if he liked brightness and gaiety and rather shirked the dreary side of life? She sympathized so much with him that she had no dread of the future; she had no wish to make him over to her standard. (Herein lies the secret of half the “incompatibility” in marriage, if Molly had but known it; but she was not, consciously, a social philosopher.) “Well, I can’t help it; I don’t believe Harry will be more spoiled by being made happy in his own way than if I try to make him make me happy in mine; and if he does I can’t help it. It all depends, I suppose, whether one loves a man well enough to enjoy his pleasure and find one’s own in it; and I can’t help thinking Mrs. Carlyle was just as happy as those who pity her, until she got ill and morbid; the sacrifices she seemed to make of her own comfort were not so, for her pleasure was in promoting that of her great husband.”