d.

Mrs. Burton did not regard him. "If she had any ambition she would be
anything--just like some other lazy-boots," and now she gave the large,
dangling congress gaiter of her husband a little push with the point of
her slipper, for purposes of identification, as the newspapers say.
"But the only ambition she's got is for her daughter, and she _is_
proud of her, and she would spoil her if she could get up the energy.
She dotes on her, and Nie is fond of her mother, too. Do you think she
can ever do anything in art?"

"If she were a boy, I should say yes; as she's a girl, I don't know,"
said Ludlow. "The chances are against her."

"Nature's against her, too," said Burton.

"_Human_ nature ought to be for her, then," said Mrs. Burton. "If she
were your sister what should you wish her to be?" she asked Ludlow.

"I should wish her to be"--Ludlow thought a moment and then
concluded--"happily married."

"Well, that's a shame!" cried Mrs. Burton.

Her husband laughed, while he knocked the ashes out of his pipe against
the edge of his chair-seat. "Rough on the holy estate of matrimony,
Polly."

"Oh, pshaw! I believe as much in the holy estate of matrimony as
anybody, but I don't believe it's the begin-all or the end-all for a
woman, any more than it is for a man. What, Katy?" she spoke to a girl
who appeared and disappeared in the doorway. "Oh! Well, come in to
supper, now. I hope you have an appetite, Mr. Ludlow. Mr. Burton's such
a delicate eater, and I like to have _some_body keep me in
countenance." She suddenly put her hand on the back of her husband's
chair, and sprung it forward from its incline against the wall, with a
violence that bounced him fearfully, and extorted a roar of protest
from him.

They were much older than Ludlow, and they permitted themselves the
little rowdy freedoms that good-natured married people sometimes use,
as fearlessly in his presence as if he were a grown-up nephew. They
prized him as a discovery of their own, for they had stumbled on him
one day before any one else had found him out, when he was sketching at
Fontainebleau. They liked the look of his picture, as they viewed it at
a decent remove over his shoulder, and after they got by Burton
proposed to go back and kill the fellow on account of the solemn
coxcombery of his personal appearance. His wife said: "Well, ask him
what he'll take for his picture, first," and Burton returned and said
with brutal directness, while he poi