“Hugh, dear!” Marjorie shook a remonstrative finger at him. “You know
how I dislike slang! And what if the babies should see you with your
mouth crammed like that!”
Her husband grinned boyishly.
“Pardon me,” he said, with exaggerated dignity. “What I meant to say,
Mrs. Benton, was, what have you been planning to do when your husband is
no longer a wage slave, a poor minion whose chief duty is to watch other
people’s money, and shall himself become a personage of wealth and
position?”
Marjorie’s eyes sparkled and her cheeks glowed rosy with excitement as
she answered enthusiastically. “Oh, such heaps and heaps of wonderful
plans, dear. I scarcely know how to begin to tell them all. First of
all, of course, we’ll leave here and go to New York. We will purchase a
lovely home—somewhere on the Drive, I think. Then we will spend days
and days going about in all sorts of quaint little shops searching for
rare antiques and selecting beautiful furniture and draperies. When our
home is ready, we will have a nurse for the kiddies, and after a couple
of years, a governess, and when they grow up, Elinor can go to a select
finishing school for young ladies, and Howard can attend college
and—oh, I could go on forever and ever planning, but it seems absurd,
so many years ahead, and—” She stopped suddenly. “Why dear, you’re not
enthusing at all, and you don’t seem to be interested in anything I am
saying. Don’t my castles in the air meet with your approval?”
Hugh shook his head sadly. “Well not exactly, dear—the first time since
we’ve been married, too, but our ideas are mighty far apart.”
“Well then, what do your ideas happen to be?” Marjorie was a little
hurt.
Hugh contemplated his wife for a moment, as though loath to say anything
that might dim the enthusiasm that glowed in her blue eyes.
“My thoughts are a long way from New York,” he began, “probably you
wouldn’t be interested at all. But all my life I’ve had just one dream.”
“Of course, I’m interested in what you want, Hugh dear,” quietly
answered Marjorie, but something in her tone belied the ardor of the
words. “Tell me.”
“It’s just this.” For a moment Hugh stopped, and the vision he conjured
brought an eagerness to his words when he spoke.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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