tfolios.

"I'm thankful we're going to a region of picturesque men," says
Ronayne, "for I think my lot in life likely to be a little less
afflictive than it was last year. I don't much mind leading contrary
minded horses up and down by the hour, coaxing suspicious or aggressive
goats; I might even put another bull as savage as that fellow at
Twickenham through his paces; but as to posing myself, in any possible
fashion, even as a snoring shepherd, please to consider, ladies, that
it's not down in our summer programme.

"Talk of the miseries of a man with a literary wife! What are they, I
should like to be told, beside those of the unlucky mortal who's
married a 'fair artist,' and can never so much as yawn in peace again,
without being perpetuated in the act?"

"I had an eye to business when I married you, sir!" I retort. "You see
you're a fine, tall, well-made animal, and since I own you, why should
I go pay away my money for some other model who wouldn't be half so
good-looking, and whom I couldn't frighten so well into minding me? Not
pose indeed! Perhaps you would even choose to be bow-legged if so you
could escape doing your duty? And I think you're maliciously trying to
get stout. In our rides lately, I notice you puff a good deal if we
have a bit of a race, and you're really getting a quite perceptible
little bulge!"

And Ronayne, who knows very well that he's a capital figure, and whom I
accuse of keeping the lowest button of his coat fastened in order to
display his slender waist, gives an alarmed glance down at himself, and
I see, to my great amusement, that no Bass is uncorked at luncheon, my
lord consenting himself with a glass of sherry instead--a needless
self-denial, I hasten to add, for he's really no more bulging than a
greyhound! But he deserves the little scare for his attempt at
rebellion. Fancy my husband having any will of his own about stopping
in any attitude I choose him to take, and for as long as I choose! I
knew such a queer artist in London, a rather coarse, wholly uneducated
woman, but with a streak of real genius. She married the commonest,
stupidest man, a pink-and-white young idiot of a tailor, grown now to
be the "heavy father"--red, fat, lazy, letting his wife earn all the
money. Somebody scolded about him to the poor, over-worked wife. "Yes,
I know I have to keep the pot boiling," she answered, "but then Dave
saves a model, he's the kindest father to the children, and he does all