ree years_. Did you ever hear of such constancy?"

"Do you call that constancy? Why, if a fellow can't wait three years for
a lovely girl like that, he must be a poor stick. Why, my uncle
Montgomery was engaged to his wife seventeen years, while he went out to
India and shook the pagoda-tree, after which he came back, paid all his
father's debts, and they married and went into the house they had picked
out before he sailed," said Mr. Heathcote.

"Good gracious! what a time! I hope the poor things were happy at last.
Were they?" asked Edith.

"H-m--pretty well. He is a rather fiery, tyrannical old party. She
doesn't get her own way to hurt," he replied.

"I have heard that Englishwomen give way to the men in everything and
are always, voluntarily or involuntarily, sacrificed to them. It must be
so bad for both," said Edith sweetly.

"Oh, you go in for woman's rights and that sort of thing, I suppose," he
said, in a tone of annoyance.

"Indeed I don't do anything of the kind," replied she, with warmth. "If
I did, I should be aping the men when I wasn't sneering at them. But I
respect your sex most when they most deserve to be respected, and I
don't see anything to admire in a selfish, tyrannical man that is always
imposing his will, opinions, and wishes upon the ladies of his household
and expects to be the first consideration from the cradle to the grave
because he happens to be a man."

"But he is the head of his house. He ought to get his own way, if
anybody does, and, if he is not a coward, he will, too," said Mr.
Heathcote rather hotly. "Would you have a man a molly-coddle, tied to
his wife's apron-string, and not daring to call his soul his own?"

"Not at all," replied Edith. "It is the cowards that are the tyrants.
'The bravest are the tenderest, the loving are the daring,' as our
American poet says. And women have souls of their own, except in the
East. Why shouldn't _they_ be the first consideration and do as they
please, pray? They are the weaker, the more delicate and daintily bred.
If there is any pampering and spoiling to be done, they should be the
objects of it. And as to rights, there is no divine right of way given
to man, that I know of. I don't believe in that sort of thing at all. Of
course no reasonable woman wants or expects everybody to kootoo before
her and everything to give way to her."

"And no gentleman fails to show a proper respect for his wife's wishes
and comfort, not to mention h