 civilization. They matched
middling well; with rather too marked a tendency to strain the leash and run
frolic on the part of friend Debit (the wanton male), which deepened the blush
of the comparison. Her father had noticed the same funny thing in his effort to
balance his tugging accounts: »Now then for a look at Man and Wife«: except that
he made Debit stand for the portly frisky female, Credit the decorous and
contracted other half, a prim gentleman of a constitutionally lean habit of
body, remonstrating with her. »You seem to forget that we are married, my dear,
and must walk in step or bundle into the Bench,« Dan Merion used to say.
    Diana had not so much to rebuke in Mr. Debit; or not at the first reckoning.
But his ways were curious. She grew distrustful of him, after dismissing him
with a quiet admonition and discovering a series of ambush bills, which he must
have been aware of when he was allowed to pass as an honourable citizen. His
answer to her reproaches pleaded the necessitousness of his purchases and
expenditure: a capital plea; and Mrs. Credit was requested by him, in a
courteous manner, to drive her pen the faster, so that she might wax to a
corresponding size and satisfy the world's idea of fitness in couples. She would
have costly furniture, because it pleased her taste; and a French cook, for a
like reason, in justice to her guests; and trained servants; and her tribe of
pensioners; flowers she would have profuse and fresh at her windows and over the
rooms; and the pictures and engravings on the walls were (always for the good
reason mentioned) choice ones; and she had a love of old lace, she loved colours
as she loved cheerfulness, and silks, and satin hangings, Indian ivory carvings,
countless mirrors, Oriental woods, chairs and desks with some feature or a
flourish in them, delicate tables with antelope legs, of approved workmanship in
the chronology of European upholstery, and marble clocks of cunning device to
symbol Time, mantelpiece decorations, illustrated editions of her favourite
authors; her bed-chambers, too, gave the nest for sleep a dainty cosiness in
aërial draperies. Hence, more or less directly, the peccant bills. Credit was
reduced to reckon to a nicety the amount she could rely on positively: her fixed
income from her investments and the letting of The Crossways: the days of
half-yearly payments that would magnify her to some proportions beside the
alarming growth of her partner, who was proud of it
