Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/386

572 going aboard to-night, so that he can see about the loading of his mining things early to-morrow morning. He was awfully curt when I told him I couldn't for the life of me tell him yes or no. Oh, dear, I dare say he fancied—well, I don't know what. And here it is after three!"

She got up and looked at herself in the mirror over the fireplace, and then gazed half enviously at Miss Porter, who was cutting her way through the pages of a thick logic with the complacent expression of one whose mind is at ease.

"It means giving up my freedom," Edith said wistfully, looking at Miss Porter and inviting contradiction.

"A married woman is under the thumb of her husband," that lady found time to say, as she slid her paper-knife between the leaves.

Edith wriggled uneasily.

"Don't," she said; "I feel as though an iron clamp or vise was around somewhere. Does Paul strike you as a tyrannical sort of man?"

"He's the sort of man who would be master in his own house, I think," said Miss Porter.

"Oh, well," said Edith, cocking her head on one side and looking critically at Miss Porter, "after all, what do you know about him? You can't judge him, you really can't, from the little you have seen of him. And, besides, you've always managed to get on the wrong subjects with him—women's having latch-keys, and their going alone to the theaters at night. He never shows off at his best on those subjects, because he has such mediæval opinions, you know. But, anyway, tyrannical or not, I should loathe a man I could twist around my finger; now, wouldn't you?"

"I should not, under any circumstances, enjoy life with a bully," rejoined Miss Porter, after a moment's thought.

"We are not considering life with a bully," said Edith, "we are considering life with a mining engineer."

She seated herself at Miss Porter's desk, and began pulling over the note paper.

"I'm going to write here, if you don't mind," she said. "I don't want to go