He expected to do the wrong thing when left to his own devices, and he did it without any apparent recollection of his former misdeeds and their consequences. There was a good deal of comedy in it all, and some tragedy. She expected him in this event to do as he pleased, and she resigned herself to it with considerable comfort in holding him accountable. He learned to expect this, and after suffering keenly from her disappointment with whatever he did he waited patiently till she forgot her grievance and began to extract what consolation lurks in the irreparable. A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, V2 [WH#14][wh2nf10.txt]3367 "Now, Alma," said her mother, with the clinging persistence of such natures. Mrs. March asked her husband what a dividend was. "It's a chicken before it's hatched." "I am not blue, Alma. But I cannot endure this--this hopefulness of yours." What you want is some man who can have patience with mediocrity putting on the style of genius, and with genius turning mediocrity on his hands. You know we Southerners have all had to go to woak. But Ah don't mand it. I tell papa I shouldn't ca' fo' the disgrace of bein' poo' if it wasn't fo' the inconvenience." He had that timidity of the elder in the presence of the younger man which the younger, preoccupied with his own timidity in the presence of the elder, cannot imagine. A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, V3 [WH#15][wh3nf10.txt]3368 Dryfoos complained to his wife on the basis of mere affectional habit, which in married life often survives the sense of intellectual equality. He did not expect her to reason with him, but there was help in her listening, and though she could only soothe his fretfulness with soft answers which were often wide of the purpose, he still went to her for solace. He began to brag of his wife, as a good husband always does when another woman charms him. His courage hadn't been put to the test, and courage is a matter of proof, like proficiency on the fiddle, you know: you can't tell whether you've got it till you try." I wish that old friend of hers would hurry up and git well--or something. Men who have made money and do not yet know that money has made them.... A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, V4 [WH#16][wh4nf10.txt]3369 He seemed to be lying in wait for some encroachment of the literary department on the art department, and he met it now and then with anticipative reprisal. In the course of his married life March had learned not to censure the irretrievable; but this was just what his wife had not learned.... She was too ignorant of her ignorance to recognize the mistakes she made. But in these matters we have no right to burden our friends with our decisions." The Marches had no longer the gross appetite for novelty which urges youth to a surfeit of strange scenes, experiences, ideas; and makes travel, with all its annoyances and fatigues, an inexhaustible delight. A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES, V5 [WH#17][wh5nf10.txt]3370