Chapter III

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"You know me?" said the husband, curiously. (It is always so fascinating when anybody thinks she know us better than we know ourselves!) "Tell me, what do you think about me?"

"You are restless," said Henriette. "You are suspicious. You pass your time putting flies in your milk, and inventing wise schemes to get them out."

"Oh, you think that, do you?" said George, pleased to be talked about.

"I am not annoyed," she answered. "You have always been that way--and I know that it's because at bottom you are timid and disposed to suffer. And then, too, perhaps you have reasons for not having confidence in a wife's intimate friends--lady-killer that you are!"

George found this rather embarrassing; but he dared not show it, so he laughed gayly. "I don't know what you mean," he said-- "upon my word I don't. But it is a trick I would not advise everybody to try."

There were other embarrassing moments, caused by George's having things to conceal. There was, for instance, the matter of the six months' delay in the marriage--about which Henriette would never stop talking. She begrudged the time, because she had got the idea that little Gervaise was six months younger than she otherwise would have been. "That shows your timidity again," she would say. "The idea of your having imagined yourself a consumptive!"

Poor George had to defend himself. "I didn't tell you half the truth, because I was afraid of upsetting you. It seemed I had the beginning of chronic bronchitis. I felt it quite keenly whenever I took a breath, a deep breath--look, like this. Yes--I felt--here and there, on each side of the chest, a heaviness--a difficulty--"

"The idea of taking six months to cure you of a thing like that!" exclaimed Henriette. "And making our baby six months younger than she ought to be!"

"But," laughed George, "that means that we shall have her so much the longer! She will get married six months later!"

"Oh, dear me," responded the other, "let us not talk about such things! I am already worried, thinking she will get married some day."

"For my part," said George, "I see myself mounting with her on my arm the staircase of the Madeleine."

"Why the Madeleine?" exclaimed his wife. "Such a very magnificent church!"

"I don't know--I see her under her white veil, and myself all dressed up, and with an order."

"With an order!" laughed Henriette. "What do you expect to do to win an order?"

"I don't know that--but I see myself with it. Explain it as you will, I see myself with an order. I see it all, exactly as if I were there--the Swiss guard with his white stockings and the halbard, and the little milliner's assistants and the scullion lined up staring."

"It is far off--all that," said Henriette. "I don't like to talk of it. I prefer her as a baby. I want her to grow up--but then I change my mind and think I don't. I know your mother doesn't. Do you know, I don't believe she ever thinks about anything but her little Gervaise."