Dolly Dialogues Part 22

"Why, it isn't even true," said Dolly scornfully.

Now when I heard this ancient and respectable legend thus cavalierly challenged, I fell to studying it again, and presently I exclaimed:

"Yes, you're right! If it said that, it wouldn't be true; but Archie translated it wrong."

"Well, you have a shot," suggested Archie.

"The oysters are eaten and put down in the bill," said I. "And you will observe, Archie, that it does not say in whose bill."

"Ah!" said Dolly.

"Well, somebody's got to pay," persisted Archie.

"Oh, yes, somebody," laughed Dolly.

"Well, I don't know," said Archie. "I suppose the chap that has the fun--"

"It's not always a chap," observed Dolly.

"Well, then the individual," amended Archie. "I suppose he'd have to pay."

"It doesn't say so," I remarked mildly. "And according to my small experience--"

"I'm quite sure your meaning is right, Mr. Carter," said Dolly in an authoritative tone.

"As for the other motto, Archie," said I, "it merely means that a woman considers all hours wasted which she does not spend in the society of her husband."

"Oh, come, you don't gammon me," said Archie. "It means that the sun don't s.h.i.+ne unless it's fine, you know."

Archie delivered this remarkable discovery in a tone of great self satisfaction.

"Oh, you dear old thing!" said Dolly.

"Well, it does you know," said he.

There was a pause. Archie kissed his wife (I am not complaining; he has, of course, a perfect right to kiss his wife) and strolled away toward the hothouses.

I lit another cigarette. Then Dolly, pointing to the stem of the dial, cried:

"Why, here's another inscription--oh, and in English?"

She was right. There was another--carelessly scratched on the old battered column--nearly effaced, for the characters had been but lightly marked--and yet not, as I conceived from the tenor of the words, very old.

"What is it?" asked Dolly, peering over my shoulder, as I bent down to read the letters, and shading her eyes with her hand. (Why didn't she put on her hat? We touch the Incomprehensible.)

"It is," said I, "a singularly poor, shallow, feeble, and undesirable little verse."

"Read it out," said Dolly.

So I read it. The silly fellow had written:

Life is Love, the poets tell us, In the little books they sell us; But pray, ma'am--what's of Life the Use, If Life be Love? For Love's the Deuce.

Dolly began to laugh gently, digging the pin again into her hat.

"I wonder," she said, "whether they used to come and sit by this old dial just as we did this morning!"

"I shouldn't be at all surprised," said I. "And another point occurs to me, Lady Mickleham."

"Oh, does it? What's that, Mr. Carter?"

"Do you think that anybody measured the rain gauge!"

Dolly looked at me very gravely.

"I'm so sorry when you do that," said she pathetically.

I smiled.

"I really am," said dolly. "But you don't mean it, do you?"

"Certainly not," said I.

Dolly smiled.

"No more than he did!" said I, pointing to the sun dial.

And then we both smiled.

"Will this hour count, Mr. Carter?" asked Dolly, as she turned away.

"That would be rather strict," said I.

A REMINISCENCE

"I know exactly what your mother wants, Phyllis," observed Mrs. Hilary.

"It's just to teach them the ordinary things," said little Miss Phyllis.

"What are the ordinary things?" I ventured to ask.

"What all girls are taught, of course, Mr. Carter," said Mrs. Hilary.

"I'll write about it at once." And she looked at me as if she thought that I might be about to go.

"It is a comprehensive curriculum," I remarked, crossing my legs, "if one may judge from the results. How old are your younger sisters, Miss Phyllis?"