She will have no temptation to laugh at the most
beautiful and sacred of earthly themes. There is, to my mind, something
incurably frivolous about a woman who laughs when a man is in earnest. I
have tried over and over again to impress this upon Catherine, but it
never had any other effect but to increase her amusement. She is a young
woman entirely without the bump of veneration, and _this_, I should say,
far more than an elegant pronunciation, is the desideratum in a wife.
Sunday evening. I am in the mental condition of "Truthful James." I ask
myself: "Do I wake? Do I dream?" I inquire at set intervals whether the
Caucasian is played out? So far as I represent the race, I am compelled
to reply in the affirmative. This is what has happened. I was smoking my
post-prandial cigar in the terraced garden, lying back in a comfortable
basket-chair fetched out from the sitting-room, when a shadow fell upon
the grass, and Mrs. Anderson appeared in her walking things to know if
there was anything I was likely to want, as she and "Faaether" and the
little boys were just starting for _H_'Orton.
"Don't trouble about me," said I; "go and enjoy yourself.
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