There was nothing
"horrid" about it in any fiction she had read. The man gave presents,
did services, sought to be in every way delightful. The woman "went out"
with him, smiled at him, was kissed by him in decorous secrecy, and if
he chanced to offend, denied her countenance and presence. Usually she
did something "for his good" to him, made him go to church, made him
give up smoking or gambling, smartened him up. Quite at the end of the
story came a marriage, and after that the interest ceased.
That was the tenor of Marion's fiction; but I think the work-table
conversation at Smithie's did something to modify that. At Smithie's it
was recognised, I think, that a "fellow" was a possession to be desired;
that it was better to be engaged to a fellow than not; that fellows had
to be kept--they might be mislaid, they might even be stolen. There was
a case of stealing at Smithie's, and many tears.
Smithie I met before we were married, and afterwards she became a
frequent visitor to our house at Ealing. She was a thin, bright-eyed,
hawk-nosed girl of thirtyodd, with prominent teeth, a high-pitched,
eager voice and a disposition to be urgently smart in her dress.
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