She had developed wonderfully, this bewitching wife of mine, this quiet
able one in her work, this smiling humorous one in her life, this
watchful, joyous, intimate one in the hours that shut everything out.
Sue said I idolized my wife, that I saw her all perfection, "without one
redeeming vice." Not at all. I knew her vices well enough. I knew she
could get distinctly cross when a new gown came home all wrong. I knew
that she could lie to me, I had caught her at it several times when she
said she was feeling finely and then confessed to me the next day, "I
had a splitting headache last night." In fact, she had any number of
vices--queer, mysterious feminine moods when she quite shamelessly shut
me out. She didn't half take care of herself, she went places when she
should have stayed at home. And finally, she was slow at dressing.
Placidly seated in front of her mirror she could spend an entire hour in
doing her soft luxuriant hair.
I went over all these vices now as I lay back on the sofa. Idolize her?
Not at all. I knew her. We were married, thank God.
Then she came back into the room. She was smiling in rather a curious
way, an expectant way, and I noticed that her color was unusually high.
Eleanore always dressed so well, but to-night she had outdone herself.
From her trim blue satin slippers to the demure little band of blue at
her throat she was more enchantingly fresh than ever. Suffragettes and
that sort of thing were all very well on the Avenue. Give me Eleanore at
home.
"Did you see the parade?" she inquired.
"Yes."
"Did you see me?"
I fairly jumped!
"You?" I demanded. "Were you in that march?"
"I most certainly was," she said quietly. Having shot her bolt she was
regarding me gravely now, with the merest glint of amused delight
somewhere in her gray-blue eyes. "Why not?" she asked. "I believe in it,
I want the vote. Why shouldn't I march? I paraded," she added serenely,
"in the college section right up near the head of the line. That's why
I'm home so early. I'm afraid I was quite conspicuous, for you see I'm
rather small and I had to take long swinging strides to keep in step.
But I soon got used to it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the cheers. We waved
back at them with our flags."
"But," I cried, "my darling wife! Why didn't you tell me about it
ahead?"
"Because"--she came close up to me and said quite confidentially, "we
do these things all by ourselves. You don't mean to say that you mind
it, dear?"
I lost about five seconds and then I did exactly right. I took her in my
arms and laughed and called my wife by many names and said she couldn't
worry me, that I didn't mind it in the least, was proud of her and so
on. In short, to use a slang expression, I distinctly got away with it.
Moreover, I soon felt what I said. I was honestly rather proud of my
wife for having had the nerve to march. It must have been quite a
struggle, for she was no born marcher.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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