“Here, here!” her husband said. “Calm down! You seem to have got yourself worked up into a mighty sarcastic mood for some reason. Those people only want to be nice to us and they’re all right.” Mrs. Sperry looked at him coldly. “Did you hear Mr. Sullender saying that his company had sold seven ‘_homes_’ this month?” she inquired. “Oh, you can’t expect everybody to know all the purist niceties of the English language,” he said. “Sullender’s all right and his wife struck me as one of the nicest, kindest women I ever——” “Kind!” Mrs. Sperry echoed loudly. “She doesn’t stop at being ‘kind’! She’s so caressingly tender, so angelically loving, that she can’t possibly pronounce a one-syllabled word without making two syllables of it! Did you notice that she said ‘yay-yus’ for ‘yes’, and ‘no-oh’ for ‘no’? I do hate the turtle-dove style of talking, and I never met a worse case of it. Mrs. Sullender’s the sweetest sweet-woman I ever saw in my life and I’m positive she leads her husband a dog’s life!” “What nonsense!” “It serves him right for his Realtoring, though,” Mrs. Sperry added thoughtfully. “He _ought_ to have that kind of a wife!” “But you just said she was the sweetest——” “Yes, the sweetest sweet-woman I ever saw. I do hate the whole clan of sweet-women!” The young husband looked perplexed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he admitted. “I always thought——” “I’m talking about the sweet-woman type that Mrs. Sullender belongs to. They use _intended_ sweetness. They speak to total strangers with sweetness. They wear expressions of saintly sweetness. Everybody speaks of a sweet-woman with loving reverence, and it’s generally felt that it would be practically immoral to contradict one of ’em. To be actually sassy to a sweet-woman would be a cardinal sin! They let their voices linger beautifully on the air; and they listen, themselves, to the lovely sounds they make. They always have the most exquisitely self-sacrificing reasons for every action of their lives; but they _do_ just exactly what they _want_ to do, and everybody else has to do what a sweet-woman wants him to. That’s why I’m sure Mr. Sullender, in spite of all his pomposity, leads a dog’s life at home.” “Of all the foolish talk!” young Sperry exclaimed. “Why, everybody says they’re the most ideally married couple and that they lead the happiest life together that——” “‘Everybody says!’” she mocked him, interrupting. “How often have you known what ‘everybody says’ turn out to be the truth about anything? And besides, we don’t know a thing about any of these people, and we don’t know anybody else that does! Who is this ‘everybody’ that’s told you how happy the Sullenders are?” “Well, it’s just a general impression I got,” he admitted. “I think I heard someone down-town alluding to Sullender’s domestic relations being very fortunate and pleasant.” “Oh, you _think_ so? Is _that_ all? You don’t really know a thing about it, then.”