He
had `run up for the day, on business--journalism' and was now on his
way to Charing Cross. `I know you'll like my wife,' he said at
parting. She's--well, she's glorious.'
As this was the epithet he had erst applied to `Beowulf' and to
`Sigurd the Volsung' it raised no high hopes. And indeed, as I was
soon to find, he had again misused it. There was nothing glorious
about his bride. Some people might even have not thought her pretty. I
myself did not, in the flash of first sight. Neat, insignificant,
pleasing, was what she appeared to me, rather than pretty, and far
rather than glorious. In an age of fringes, her brow was severely
bare. She looked `practical.' But an instant later, when she smiled, I
saw that she was pretty, too. And presently I thought her delightful.
William had met me in a `governess cart,' and we went to see him
unharness the pony. He did this in a fumbling, experimental way,
confusing the reins with the traces, and profiting so little by his
wife's directions that she began to laugh. And her laugh was a lovely
thing; quite a small sound, but exquisitely clear and gay, coming in a
sequence of notes that neither rose nor fell, that were quite even; a
trill of notes, and then another, and another, as though she were
pulling repeatedly a little silver bell.
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