If Only etc.


       "Where's the disgrace, I should like to know, in inviting a couple of old friends into one's own house?" demanded Saidie aggressively.     

       Chetwynd promptly turned his back upon her. "I am addressing my wife," he said frigidly.     

       "Yes; I would like to see you talking to me in that tone of voice," returned his sister-in-law.     

       "Bella, what have you to say for yourself? Have you no self-respect whatever, and no consideration for your husband's position?"     

       "Oh, I'm sick of hearing about your position," said his wife pettishly. "In the days when you had not any, we were a lot happier. You didn't turn up your nose at my associates when I was on the boards at the Band Box! Everything was charming. You laughed then at what you now call "vulgar," and you thought it good fun, and you would have taken the property man to your heart if I had told you he was my brother. But now I am your wife it is quite a different tale. My friends are too common for you to mix with. By the Lord! I'm not at all certain whether you think       me good enough for you, myself."     

       "Bella, Bella!"     

       "Oh! Yes, it is easy enough to look broken-hearted. How dare you turn my friends out of the place? It is you, not I, who have brought disgrace upon us by introducing a stranger here and mortifying and humbling me in front of him. If the Dosses are good enough for me, they are good enough for my husband."     

       "My dear wife, they are not good enough for you. There is the whole truth. Why are you so altered? Why will you not listen to       me and take my advice as you used to do? Have you forgotten how happy we once were with each other?"     

       There was a little break in his voice, but Bella was too incensed to heed it.     

       "You mean that you did not abuse me when you had it entirely your own way! Wonderful! Perhaps you did not know that you bored me to death the whole time. And now you have got it at last. I'm tired of your cheap gentility and Brummagem pretensions; sick to death of hearing that nothing I have been used to is "proper." If my world is a second rate one, show 
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