When he triumphantly displayed it in their room, "Who's that for, Basil?"
demanded his wife; "the cook?" But seeing his ghastly look at this, she
fell upon his neck, crying, "O you poor old tasteless darling! You've got
it for me!" and seemed about to die of laughter.
"Didn't you start and throw up your hands," he stammered, "when you came
to that case of fans?"
"Yes,--in horror! Did you think I liked the cruel things, with their dead
birds and their hideous colors? O Basil, dearest! You are incorrigible.
Can't you learn that magenta is the vilest of all the hues that the
perverseness of man has invented in defiance of nature? Now, my love,
just promise me one thing," she said pathetically. "We're going to do a
little shopping in Montreal, you know; and perhaps you'll be wanting to
surprise me with something there. Don't do it. Or if you must, do tell me
all about it beforehand, and what the color of it's to be; and I can say
whether to get it or not, and then there'll be some taste about it, and I
shall be truly surprised and pleased."
She turned to put the fan into her trunk, and he murmured something about
exchanging it. "No," she said, "we'll keep it as a--a--monument." And she
deposed him, with another peal of laughter, from the proud height to
which he had climbed in pity of her nervous fears of the day.
Pages:
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165