"I think you're wrong there!" said Charlemont--"Wild oats are a singularly perpetual crop. In many cases marriage seems to give them a fresh start."
"Will there be a good harvest when YOU marry, Charly?" asked one of the company, with a laugh.
"Oh, I shouldn't wonder!" he returned, good-naturedly--"I'm just as big a fool as any other man. But I always do my best not to play down on a woman."
"Woman"--said Mr. Bludlip Courtenay, sententiously--"is a riddle. Sometimes she wants a vote in elections,--then, if it's offered to her, she won't have it. Buy her a pearl, and she says she would rather have had a ruby. Give her a park phaeton, and she declares she has been dying for a closed brougham. Offer her a five-hundred- guinea pair of cobs, and she will burst into tears and say she would have liked a 'little pug-dog--a dear, darling, little Japanese pug- dog'--she has no use for cobs. And to carry the simile further, give her a husband, and she straightway wants a lover."
"That implies that a husband ceases to be a lover,"--said Charlemont.
"Well, I guess a husband can't be doing Romeo and 'oh moon'-ing till he's senile," observed a cadaverous looking man, opposite, who originally hailed from the States, but who, having purchased an estate in England, now patriotically sought to forget that he was ever an American.
They laughed.
"'Oh moon'-ing is a good expression,"--said Lord Charlemont--"very good!"
"It's mine, sir--but you're welcome to it,"--rejoined the Anglicised renegade of the Stars and Stripes,--"To 'oh moon' is a verb every woman likes to have conjugated by a male fool once at least in her life."
"Yes--and if you don't 'oh m-moon' with her,"--lisped a young fellow at the other end of the table--"She considers you a b-b-brute!"
Again the laugh went round.
"Well, I don't think Roxmouth will have a chance to go 'oh moon'-ing with our hostess,"--said Charlemont--"The whole idea of her marriage with him has been faked up by Mrs. Fred. The girl herself,--Miss Vancourt,--doesn't want him, and won't have him."
"Will you take a bet on it?" asked Mr. Bludlip Courtenay.
"Yes, if you like!" and Charlemont laughed--"I don't bet much, but I'll bet anything you choose to name on that. Maryllia Vancourt will never, unless she is bound, gagged and drugged into it, become Duchess of Ormistoune."