My Dear Cornelia/Book 3/Chapter 2
As this was the first and remains the only occasion in my life on which any married woman has ever revealed to me any serious altercation between herself and her husband,—though I have been informed by others that such revelations are not uncommon,—I was astounded.
"Why, my dear Cornelia!" I exclaimed, "that was a fighting word. Was it then that Oliver beat you?"
"No," she answered with a partially reassuring smile, "I wish he had. Oliver sulks when he is angry. I flash out what I feel, and have it over with. Oliver sulks and plots some revenge—some ingenious, horrid little revenge that he knows will make me furious."
I gasped inwardly—if one can do that; but I tried to play the part of the unruffled confessor. I was learning so much that was new to me about happy family life. "Well, what did he do next?" I asked.
"He took a box of cigars and a novel and went up to his room, to bed. At six o'clock in the morning he got up and roused the household, apparently in the jolliest humor, ringing all through the house the big dinner-bell that we use to call the children from the woods. He made Dorothy put on her new knickers, and got the car out, and drove off to town with the children, 'for a lark,' he said. They came back about noon, and drove up to the door, and honked. I went out; and there was Dorothy in her knickers on the front seat with her father, both of them smoking, and Dorothy with her hair—her lovely soft hair—bobbed above her ears, and her neck shaved like a convict's. I could have cried—either with grief or with rage. And Oliver, simply bubbling with joy, called out, 'I've met them halfway, Cornelia darling!' Wasn't he horrid? Wasn't he perfectly horrid? I didn't cry. But Oliver went back to New York by the afternoon train. And now you know why there was no birthday party last night."