"All but about sixty or seventy millions," said March.
"Well, those are just the millions you don't know, and couldn't imagine."
"I'm not so sure of that."
"And even if you could imagine them, you couldn't make them interesting.
All the interesting ones have been, anyway."
"Some of the uninteresting ones too. I used, to meet some of that sort
over there. I believe I would rather chance it for my pleasure with those
that hadn't been."
"Then why not do it? I know you could get something out of it."
"It might be a good thing," he mused, "to take a couple who had passed
their whole life here in New York, too poor and too busy ever to go; and
had a perfect famine for Europe all the time. I could have them spend
their Sunday afternoons going aboard the different boats, and looking up
their accommodations. I could have them sail, in imagination, and
discover an imaginary Europe, and give their grotesque misconceptions of
it from travels and novels against a background of purely American
experience. We needn't go abroad to manage that. I think it would be
rather nice."
"I don't think it would be nice in the least," said Mrs. March, "and if
you don't want to talk seriously, I would rather not talk at all."
"Well, then, let's talk about our Silver Wedding Journey."
"I see. You merely want to tease and I am not in the humor for it."
She said this in a great many different ways, and then she was really
silent. He perceived that she was hurt; and he tried to win her back to
good-humor. He asked her if she would not like to go over to Hoboken and
look at one of the Hanseatic League steamers, some day; and she refused.
When he sent the next day and got a permit to see the boat; she consented
to go.