She was fond of him in a conveniently mild and reasonable fashion, and
a marriage founded upon mutual tolerance, if it is likely never to be
intensely happy, is also likely to be a pretty comfortable one. Mrs.
Staggchase paid to her husband all her tithes of mint and anise and
cumin, and she even sometimes presented him with a propitiatory
offering in excess of her strict debt; only such a gift was always set
down in her mental record as a gift and not as a tribute.
"This Stanton is an awful lout, Fred," she observed. "Perhaps he can
make a good statue of _America_, but if he can it will be because he is
so thoroughly the embodiment of the vulgar and pushing side of American
character."
"Then why in the world are you pushing him?"
"Oh, because Mrs. Ranger and Anna Frostwinch want him pushed. I don't
know but they may believe in him. Mrs. Ranger does, of course, but the
dear old soul knows no more about art than I do about Choctaw. As to
the statues, I don't think it makes much difference, they are always
laughed at, and I don't think anybody could make one in this age that
wouldn't be found fault with."
"Nobody nowadays knows enough about sculpture to criticise it
intelligently," Staggchase remarked, somewhat oracularly, "and the only
safe thing left is to find fault."
"That is just about it, and so it may as well be this booby as anybody
else that gets the commission.
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