"It would make things much more interesting if they'd do it, and get up a scandal," commented the doctor. "You'll get bored to death with the whole thing if something exciting doesn't turn up."
"I had half a mind to get up a scandal myself with Mr. Strathmore," Elsie said with a laugh; "but I confess I should be afraid of that she-dragon of a wife of his."
"It's devilish interesting to know that you are afraid of anybody."
"At least," she went on, "I could go to New York and see Bishop Candace. I can wind him round my finger. I'd tell him what Mrs. Strathmore said about his Easter sermon last year. With a little judicious comment that would do a good deal. I never yet saw a man that couldn't be managed through his vanity."
"I suppose that explains why I'm as clay in your hands."
"Oh, you're not a man; you're a monster," she retorted, rising. "Well, I must go and prepare for my comedy."
He regarded her with a look of evident admiration; a look not without a savor of the sense of ownership, and, too, not entirely devoid of good-natured insolence.
"You are devilishly well dressed for it," he observed.
"Thank you," returned Elsie, sweeping him a courtesy again. "The wife that can win compliments from her own husband has indeed scored a triumph."
Dr. Wilson puffed out a cloud of smoke with a characteristic chuckle.
"I have to admire you to justify my own taste. But you haven't told me about the comedy."
She thrust forward one of her pretty slippers.
"I suppose you expect me to say that I see the prettiest foot in Boston."
"Thank you again, but I'm not yet reduced to trying to drag compliments out of you, Chauncy. I sha'n't do that till the other men fail me. It's the slipper I wanted you to notice, and these ravishing stockings."
"If the comedy has stockings in it," he began; but she stopped him.
"There, no impudence," she said. "Did you ever see anything so entirely heavenly as those stockings and slippers? I declare I've wanted ever since I put them on to keep my feet on the table to look at."
"Indeed! It's apparently getting time for me to interfere. What's your game?"
"I'm going to squelch that detestable Fred Rangely."
"My slippers," Elsie said vivaciously, again thrusting one of them forward, "are ravishing."