Explore "Olive" by Dinah Mulock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The return of the husband and father produced a considerable change in the little family at Stirling. A household, long composed entirely of women, always feels to its very foundations the incursion of one of the "nobler sex. " From the first morning when there resounded the multiplied ringing of bells, and the creaking of boots on the staircase, the glory of the feminine dynasty was departed. Its easy _laisser-aller_, its lax rule, and its indifference to regular forms were at an end. Mrs. Rothesay could no longer indulge her laziness -- no breakfasting in bed, and coming down in curl-papers. The long gossiping visits of her thousand-and-one acquaintances subsided into frigid morning calls, at which the grim phantom of the husband frowned from a corner and suppressed all idle chatter. Sybilla's favourite system of killing time by half-hours in various idle ways, at home and abroad, was terminated at once.
She had now to learn how to be a duteous wife, always ready at the beck and call of her husband, and attentive to his innumerable wants.