delay,
sighed and said, "They are not like us, and we cannot help it. They are
more temporizing."

"How do you mean?" Agatha unmasked again.

"They can bear to keep things better than we can, and they trust to time
to bring them right, or to come right of themselves."

"I don't think Mr. March would trust things to come right of
themselves!" said Agatha in indignant accusal of Mrs. March's sincerity.

"Ah, that's just what he would do, my dear, and has done, all along; and
I don't believe we could have lived through without it: we should have
quarrelled ourselves into the grave!"

"Mrs. March!"

"Yes, indeed. I don't mean that he would ever deceive me. But he would
let things go on, and hope that somehow they would come right without
any fuss."

"Do you mean that he would let anybody deceive themselves?"

"I'm afraid he would--if he thought it would come right. It used to be a
terrible trial to me; and it is yet, at times when I don't remember
that he means nothing but good and kindness by it. Only the other day
in Ansbach--how long ago it seems!--he let a poor old woman give him her
son's address in Jersey City, and allowed her to believe he would look
him up when we got back and tell him we had seen her. I don't believe,
unless I keep right round after him, as we say in New England, that
he'll ever go near the man."

Agatha looked daunted, but she said, "That is a very different thing."

"It isn't a different kind of thing. And it shows what men are,--the
sweetest and best of them, that is. They are terribly apt to
be--easy-going."

"Then you think I was all wrong?" the girl asked in a tremor.

"No, indeed! You were right, because you really expected perfection of
him. You expected the ideal. And that's what makes all the trouble, in
married life: we expect too much of each other--we each expect more of
the other than we are willing to give or can give. If I had to begin
over again, I should not expect anything at all, and then I should be
sure of being radiantly happy. But all this talking and all this writing
about love seems to turn our brains; we know that men are not perfect,
even at our craziest, because women are not, but we expect perfection of
them; and they seem to expect it of us, poor things! If we could keep
on after we are in love just as we were before we were in love, and take
nice things as favors and surprises, as we did in the beginning! But we
get more and more greedy and exacting--