Cristina and I by Arthur Stringer

Arthur Stringer (1874 – 1950) was a Canadian novelist, screenwriter, and poet who later moved to the United States.

In Christina and I, Cristina, with “her blandly solemn way of accepting herself as something in answer to prayer” is wished upon her brother-in-law, an author. Because she is nearing twenty-five, and still unmarried, and because Roddie, the goal of Cristina’s ambitions, needs a lesson, having strayed from the straight and narrow path by flirting with the Sheppard girl, she and her frocks, her candor, and her childlike craving for affection descend upon a quiet home circle. Roddie, man-like, follows, and likewise, man-like, falls into the trap Cristina prepares for him.

Eventually she gets the diamond, eventually she is married, with the provisions of course, that she is to keep all her old freedom. Roddie is worried, but he shouldn’t be: it isn’t man who can, or is going to tame Cristina, it’s life, and she isn’t going to have any vote in the matter.