ky,
wholesome boys and girls of twelve and thirteen through the primary
schools. When among themselves, they talked of servants and husbands.
They had not married and gone West or East; they had married at home,
and they had stayed at home. They had had too many things on their hands
and minds to catch up much of the recent exoticism stirring about them
here in town, and they were far from able to cope with this recent
importation of exoticism from the Rue de la Paix.

Raymond came home, one afternoon, in time for the last half-hour of his
wife's last reception. Her dress, on this occasion, was quite as daring,
in its way, as on the other, and original to the point of the bizarre.
One of the early Adeles was leaving, but she stopped for a moment and
attempted speech. She was the particular Adele with the piercing soprano
voice--a voice which had since lowered itself to sing lullabies to three
successive infants.

"Well, Raymond--" she began hopefully, and stopped. She tried again, but
failed; and she passed on and out with her words unsaid.

"Well, Raymond--" Yes, I am afraid that that was the impression of more
early friends than one.

V

Raymond had expected, of course, to give his wife her own way at the
beginning--at the very beginning, that is; and he had expected, equally,
to have her make a definite impression on the circle awaiting her. But--

Well, he had intended to "take her in hand," and to do it soon. She was
to be formed, or re-formed; she was to be adjusted, both to things in
general and to himself especially. Besides being her husband, he was to
be her kindly elder brother, her monitor, patient but firm; she was to
enter upon a state of tutelage. He was pretty certain to be right in all
his views, opinions and practices; and she, if her views, opinions and
practices were at variance with his, was pretty certain to be in the
wrong. He assumed that, during those few years in Paris, she had learned
it all in one big lesson only. The time had been too short to confirm
all this sudden instruction into a reasoned and assimilated way of life;
by no means had that superficial miscellany been rubbed into the warp
and woof of her being. The Parisian top-dressing would be removed and
the essential subsoil be exposed and tilled....

H'm!

One of the strongest of her early impressions was naturally that of the
house in which she was to live. It was big and roomy; it was detached,
and thus open to light an