You must
marry some nice, determined fellow, blue-eyed, dark-haired,
clean-shaven, about five foot eleven, with a future in business.
He will keep you in order."
"Mr. Crocker!"
"Gently, of course. Kindly-lovingly. The velvet thingummy rather
than the iron what's-its-name. But nevertheless firmly."
Ann was at the door.
"To a girl with your ardent nature some one with whom you can
quarrel is an absolute necessity of life. You and I are
affinities. Ours will be an ideally happy marriage. You would be
miserable if you had to go through life with a human doormat with
'Welcome' written on him. You want some one made of sterner
stuff. You want, as it were, a sparring-partner, some one with
whom you can quarrel happily with the certain knowledge that he
will not curl up in a ball for you to kick, but will be there
with the return wallop. I may have my faults--" He paused
expectantly. Ann remained silent. "No, no!" he went on. "But I am
such a man. Brisk give-and-take is the foundation of the happy
marriage. Do you remember that beautiful line of Tennyson's--'We
fell out, my wife and I'? It always conjures up for me a vision
of wonderful domestic happiness. I seem to see us in our old age,
you on one side of the radiator, I on the other, warming our old
limbs and thinking up snappy stuff to hand to each
other--sweethearts still! If I were to go out of your life now,
you would be miserable.
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