thrown herself at full length upon a couch, and was idly teazing the baby
with the tassel of her muff. "How provoking you are! You might as well be
dead as married! It's well for your husband that I'm not in your place.
Why, every one's talking about it, my child, how you are cooped up here,
and Willis at the club-house night after night. Morgan told me he was
always there, and asked me what kind of a wife he had--whether you
quarreled or flirted, that he was away from you so much."

Had the heedless speaker glanced up from her play with little Gertrude, she
would have seen her friend's face suffused with a slight flush, for the
last was a view of the case entirely new to her. But she said, quietly as
ever--

"'Everybody' might be in better business, Nell; and why is it well for
Willis that you are not in my place?"

"Why? Because I'd pay him in his own coin; he should not have the game all
in his own hands. If he went to the club, I'd flirt, that's all, and we'd
see who would hold out the longer."

"Bad principle, Nelly. 'Two wrongs,' as the old proverb says, 'never make a
right;' and yet I am sorry I said that, for so long as it gives Willis
pleasure, and he is not drawn from his business by it, it is no wrong,
though there is danger to any man in confirmed habits of 'good-fellowship,'
as it is called. No one could see that more plainly than I do, or dread it
more. Of course, when we love a person it is natural to wish to be with him
as much as possible; and I must confess I am a little lonely now and then.
But your plan would never succeed, nor would it be wise to annoy my husband
with complaints. Nothing provokes a man like an expostulation."