A wife just like Addie Lefroy--not one whit more elegant, more beautiful, more fascinating, but just as she is--soft-faced, irregular-featured, simple-mannered, gentle-voiced, yet with a suggestion of hot-breathed, breezy youth about her every movement, her every gesture. Yes; if ever he marries, it will be some one like her, very like her--her exact counterpart, in fact; and where is he to find that? That is the question. Rapidly, while he sips his tea, he runs his eye, as he would down a stiff column of figures, over the many eligible young ladies whose acquaintance he owns in his native town; but none of them suits his prejudiced eye. One is too handsome, another too tall, another too fashionable, another too affected--all of them are everything that is not Addie Lefroy. Addie Lefroy, Addie Lefroy! Softly he repeats her name again and again, as if the words themselves tickle his palate and season his tea pleasantly, fragrantly. Addie Lefroy! How the name suits her! It has a sort of liquid, swinging sound. If ever she changes it, will she get another to suit her as well? For instance, Addie--Addie--Arm--
With a start he "pulls himself together," and swallows a big lump of cake that he loathes, which he hopes will act as a sort of break in the dangerous current of his imagination.
Meanwhile Miss Addie, quite unconscious of the agreeable turmoil that her presence is awaking in the breast of her massive middle-aged host, sips her tea and munches cake in blissful unconcern.
"I suppose," she muses, with a little ruefulness, "if the boys and Polly knew, they would think it awfully mean of me, feeding on the enemy like this; but--but--I really can not help it--I'm half famished. Perhaps, if they hadn't eaten anything from seven A.M. until five P.M. but half a moldy apple, they wouldn't be so particular. I don't know about Bob, though; I think his pride would stomach a longer fast than that. I don't believe any strait of body would induce him to eat a crumb under this roof now--and yet Mr. Armstrong hasn't behaved so badly. I might have been lying in the wood but for him. Oh, dear, how horrible! I've actually cleared the whole plate of toast alone! I--I hope he won't notice; I'll shove the dish behind the urn. Yes; he can't see it there. How did I do it? I never felt myself eating. That cake is delicious too--better than any of Sally's. I feel so much better now; I suppose it must have been hunger that helped me to go off in that ridiculous fashion in the grove."