"I am afraid you must rank with your husband, wifie," said _mine_, as the wives of the working people of London often call their husbands. "Then you do count yourself a Bohemian: pray, what significance do you attach to the epithet?" I asked. "I don't know, except it signifies our resemblance to the gypsies," he answered. "I don't understand you quite." "I believe the gypsies used to be considered Bohemians," interposed Roger, "though they are doubtless of Indian origin. Their usages being quite different from those amongst which they live, the name Bohemian came to be applied to painters, musicians, and such like generally, to whom, save by courtesy, no position has yet been accorded by society--so called." "But why have they not yet vindicated for themselves a social position," I asked, "and that a high one?" "Because they are generally poor, I suppose," he answered; "and society is generally stupid." "May it not be because they are so often, like the gypsies, lawless in their behavior, as well as peculiar in their habits?" I suggested. "I understand you perfectly, Mrs. Percivale," rejoined Roger with mock offence. "But how would that apply to Charlie?" "Not so well as to you, I confess," I answered. "But there is ground for it with him too." "I have thought it all over many a time," said Percivale; "and I suppose it comes in part from inability to understand the worth of our calling, and in part from the difficulty of knowing where to put us." "I suspect," I said, "one thing is that so many of them are content to be received as merely painters, or whatever they may be by profession. Many, you have told me, for instance, accept invitations which do not include their wives." "They often go to parties, of course, where there are no ladies," said Roger. "That is not what I mean," I replied. "They go to dinner-parties where there are ladies, and evening parties, too, without their wives." "Whoever does that," said Percivale, "has at least no right to complain that he is regarded as a Bohemian; for in accepting such invitations, he accepts insult, and himself insults his wife." Nothing irritated my bear so much as to be asked to dinner without me. He would not even offer the shadow of a reason for declining the invitation. "For," he would say, "if I give the real reason, namely, that I do not choose to go where my wife is excluded, they will set it down to her jealous ambition of entering a sphere beyond her reach; I will not give a false reason, and indeed have no objection to their seeing that I am offended; therefore, I assign none. If they have any chivalry in them, they may find out my reason readily enough."