"Why don't you keep him around?" Ida asked me once. "He's so ornamental. I'm not strong for tame cats, but I wouldn't mind Roger on the hearthrug myself."
But up to this time I'd never really wanted anybody on the hearthrug but Bill. If I do say it, I was a perfectly contented wife until the time Carrie Smith made her historic effort to revive the past. "Let sleeping dogs lie" is my motto now--and tame cats too.
Well, Roger called me up, and there was the little thrill in his voice that I used to think he kept for me. I know better now.
"What's this about going out to Carrie Smith's?" he said over the phone.
"That's all," I replied. "You're invited and I'm going."
"O!" said Roger. And waited a moment. Then:
"I was going on to the polo," he said, "but of course--What's wrong with Bill and polo?"
"Oh!" said Roger. "Well, then, I think I'll go to Carrie's. It sounds too good to be true--you, and no scowling husband in the offing!"
"It's--it's rather a long time since you and I had a real talk."
"Too long," said Roger. "Too long by about three years."
That afternoon he sent me a great box of flowers. My conscience was troubling me rather, so I sent them down to the dinner table. Whatever happened I was not going to lie about them.
"I've just paid a florist's bill of two hundred dollars," he grumbled. "Cut out the American beauties, old dear."
It was not his tone that made me angry. It was his calm assumption that I had bought the things. As if no one would think of sending me flowers!
"If you would stop sending orchids to silly débutantes when they come out," I snapped, "there would be no such florist's bills."
One way or another Bill got on my nerves that week. He brought Wallie Smith home one night to dinner, and Wallie got on my nerves too. I could remember, when Wallie and Carrie were engaged and we were just married, how he used to come and talk us black in the face about Carrie.
"How's Carrie, Wallie?" I said during the soup.
"She's all right," he replied, and changed the subject. But later in the evening, while Bill was walking on the lawn with a cigar, he broke out for fair.
"Carrie's on a milk diet," he said apropos of nothing. "If she stays on it another week I'm going to Colorado. She's positively brutal, and she hasn't ordered a real dinner for anybody for a week."