We are like the Trotty books or the Elsie Dinmore series. England
was our first volume, Scotland our second, and here we are, if you
please, about to live a third volume in Ireland. We fall in love,
we marry and are given in marriage, we promote and take part in
international alliances, but when the curtain goes up again, our
accumulations, acquisitions--whatever you choose to call them--have
disappeared. We are not to the superficial eye the spinster-
philanthropist, the bride to be, the wife of a year; we are the same
old Salemina, Francesca and Penelope. It is so dramatic that my
husband should be called to America; as a woman I miss him and need
him; as a character I am much better single. I don't suppose
publishers like married heroines any more than managers like married
leading ladies. Then how entirely proper it is that Ronald
Macdonald cannot leave his new parish in the Highlands. The one, my
husband, belongs to the first volume; Francesca's lover to the
second; and good gracious, Salemina, don't you see the inference?"
"I may be dull," she replied, "but I confess I do not."
"We are three?"
"Who is three?"
"That is not good English, but I repeat with different emphasis WE
are three. I fell in love in England, Francesca fell in love in
Scotland-" And here I paused, watching the blush mount rosily to
Salemina's grey hair; pink is very becoming to grey, and that, we
always say, accounts more satisfactorily for Salemina's frequent
blushes than her modesty, which is about of the usual sort.
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