I think Mrs. Strickland was glad to show me her children, and she accepted my invitation with alacrity¹. They were even more attractive than their photographs had suggested, and she was right to be proud of them. I was young enough for them not to feel shy, and they chattered² merrily about one thing and another. They were extraordinarily³ nice, healthy young children. It was very agreeable under the trees.

 

When in an hour they crowded into a cab to go home, I strolled idly to my club. I was perhaps a little lonely, and it was with a touch of envy that I thought of the pleasant family life of which I had had a glimpse. They seemed devoted⁴ to one another. They had little private jokes of their own which, unintelligible⁵ to the outsider, amused them enormously. Perhaps Charles Strickland was dull judged by a standard that demanded above all things verbal scintillation; but his intelligence was adequate to his surroundings, and that is a passport, not only to reasonable success, but still more to happiness. Mrs. Strickland was a charming woman, and she loved him. I pictured their lives, troubled by no untoward⁶ adventure, honest, decent, and, by reason of those two upstanding, pleasant children, so obviously destined⁷ to carry on the normal traditions of their race and station, not without significance. They would grow old insensibly; they would see their son and daughter come to years of reason, marry in due course—the one a pretty girl, future mother of healthy children; the other a handsome,

分享到：