Be reasonable also, as well as merciful.

If it took you over two years to make such changes, you should give me a few days to rub my eyes and get them focused on the result." Madge was now laughing heartily.

"I don't believe a man could ever eat the whole of a humble pie," she said.

"He ever insists that the donor, especially if she be a woman, should have a piece also." "There, now," cried Graydon, ruefully; "give me all of it, and make your terms." "Solomon himself couldn't have advised you better," said Madge, while Henry leaned back in his chair and laughed as if immensely amused, while Mary improved the occasion by remarking, "When will men ever learn that that is the way to get the best terms possible from a woman ?" "Indeed!" said Graydon.

"How you enlighten me! Well, Madge, I'm the more eager now to learn your terms." She felt that it was a critical moment--that there was, under their badinage, a substratum of truth and feeling--and that she had now a chance to establish relations that would favor her hope, if it had a right to exist at all, and render future companionship free from surmise on the part of her family.
"Come, Graydon," she said, "we have jested long enough, and there is no occasion for misunderstanding.