Thus my husband would begin by saying (he often said it in my hearing)
that once upon a time men took their wives as they took their horses, on
trial for a year and a day, and "really with some women there was
something to say for the old custom."
Then Mr. Vivian would remark that it was "a jolly good idea, by Jove,"
and if he "ever married, by the Lord that's just what he would do."
Then Mr. Eastcliff would say that it was a ridiculous superstition that
a woman should have her husband all to herself, "as if he were a kind of
toothbrush which she could not share with anybody else," and somebody
would add that she might as reasonably want her dentist or her
hairdresser to be kept for her own use only.
After that the ladies, not to be left behind, would join in the off-hand
rattle, and one of them would give it as her opinion that a wife might
have an incorrigibly unfaithful husband, and yet be well off.
"Ugh!" said Alma one night, shrugging her shoulders. "Think of a poor
woman being tied for life to an entirely faithful husband!"
"I adore the kind of man who goes to the deuce for a woman--Parnell, and
Gambetta and Boulanger and that sort," said a "smart" girl of three or
four-and-twenty, whereupon Camilla Eastcliff (she was a Russian) cried:
"That's vhy the co-respondents in your divorce courts are so sharming.
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