But driving mules and men was one thing, driving a wife another. What
incentive has a man, said he, when after he gets through bullying a
creature that very creature turns in and caresses him? No self-
respecting mule ever did such a thing as that, and no man would think
of it except with horror. There is absolutely no defence against a
creature who will rub your head with loving, gentle fingers after she
has worked you up to the point where you could kill her with
pleasure--or at least so said Mr. Blithers with rueful frequency.
Mr. and Mrs. Blithers had been discussing royalty. Up to the previous
week they had restricted themselves to the nobility, but as an event
of unexampled importance had transpired in the interim, they now felt
that it would be the rankest stupidity to consider any one short of a
Prince Royal in picking out a suitable husband--or, more properly
speaking, consort--for their only daughter, Maud Applegate Blithers,
aged twenty.
Mrs. Blithers long ago had convinced her husband that no ordinary
human being of the male persuasion was worthy of their daughter's
hand, and had set her heart on having nothing meaner than a Duke on
the family roll,--(Blithers alluded to it for a while as the pay-
roll)--, with the choice lying between England and Italy.
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