The young wife would have been angry if it had not been so pleasant to
loll luxuriously on the soft cushions, while they were being slowly
driven to the Deer Park.
"It's just like lying on a couch," whispered Lewis.
She playfully hit his fingers with her sunshade. Mutual acquaintances
bowed to them from the footpath. Friends waved their hands to him as
if they were saying:
"Hallo! you rascal, you have come into a fortune!"
How small the passers-by looked, how smooth the street was, how pleasant
their ride on springs and cushions!
Life should always be like that.
It went on for a whole month. Balls, visits, dinners, theatres.
Sometimes, of course, they remained at home. And at home it was more
pleasant than anywhere else. How lovely, for instance, to carry off
one's wife from her parents' house, after supper, without saying as
much as "by your leave," put her into a closed carriage, slam the
door, nod to her people and say: "Now we're off home, to our own four
walls! And there we'll do exactly what we like!"
And then to have a little supper at home and sit over it, talking and
gossiping until the small hours of the morning.
Lewis was always very sensible at home, at least in theory. One day
his wife put him to the test by giving him salt salmon, potatoes
boiled in milk and oatmeal soup for dinner.
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