"Don't you think, my dear, it would be better for you to remonstrate with Mary Anne?"
"O, because I am such a little goose, and she knows I am!"
I thought this sentiment so incompatible with the establishment of any system of check on Mary Anne, that I frowned a little.
"My precious wife, we must be serious some times. Come! sit down on this chair, close beside me! Give me the pencil! There! Now let us talk sensibly. You know, dear," what a little hand it was to hold, and what a tiny wedding ring it was to see,--"you know, my love, it is not exactly comfortable to have to go out without one's dinner. Now, is it?"
"Because, I know you're going to scold me."
"O, but reasoning is worse than scolding! I didn't marry to be reasoned with. If you meant to reason with such a poor little thing as I am, you ought to have told me so, you cruel boy!"
"No, I am not your darling. Because you must be sorry that you married me, or else you wouldn't reason with me!"
I felt so injured by the inconsequential nature of this charge, that it gave me courage to be grave.
"Now, my own Dora, you are childish, and are talking nonsense. You must remember, I am sure, that I was obliged to go out yesterday when dinner was half over; and that, the day before, I was made quite unwell by being obliged to eat underdone veal in a hurry; to-day, I don't dine at all, and I am afraid to say how long we waited for breakfast, and then the water didn't boil. I don't mean to reproach you, my dear, but this, is not comfortable."
"Oh, you cruel, cruel boy, to say I am a disagreeable wife!"
"Now, my dear Dora, you must know that I never said that!"
"I said the housekeeping was not comfortable!"
"It's exactly the same thing! and I wonder, I do, at your making such ungrateful speeches. When you know that the other day, when you said you would like a little bit of fish, I went out myself, miles and miles, and ordered it to surprise you."
"And it was very kind of you, my own darling; and I felt it so much that I wouldn't on any account have mentioned that you bought a salmon, which was too much for two; or that it cost one pound six, which was more than we can afford."
"You enjoyed it very much. And you said I was a Mouse."