"To look after him?"--with a faintly ironical inflection.

"That's what I said"--irritably. "That's--that's what wife's for, dammit!
Isn't it?"

"Oh, no." She shook her head regretfully. "That idea's extinct as the dodo.
Antiquated, Philip--very."

He glared at her ferociously.

"Worth more than half your modern ideas put together," he retorted. "Women,
don't know their duty nowadays. If they'd get married and have babies and
keep house in the good, old-fashioned way, instead of trying to be doctors
and barristers and the Lord knows what, the world would be a lot better
off. A good wife makes a good man--and that's job enough for any woman."

"I should think it might be," agreed Lady Susan meditatively. "But it
sounds a trifle feeble, doesn't it? I mean, on the part of the good man.
It's making a sort of lean-to greenhouse of him, isn't it?"

"You're outrageous, Susan! I'm not a 'lean-to' anything, but do you suppose
I'd be the bad-tempered old ruffian I am--at least, you say I am--if you'd
married me thirty years ago?"

"Twenty times worse, probably," she replied promptly. "Because, like most
wives, I should have spoiled you."

Sir Philip looked out of the window.