you look around you'll find women can match
'em. An' along with 'em you can put the candied violets an' sugared
rose leaves that only make a man out of pocket an' ain't a mite of use
to him."

Willie scanned his companion's face earnestly.

"Finally, after runnin' the collection over, it kinder come down to a
choice between caramels or chocolates. Even then I still stood firm
for the caramel, there bein' no way of makin' sure what I'd get inside
the chocolate. I warn't willin' to go it blind, I told Dave. A
chocolate's a sort of unknowable thing, ain't it? There's no fathomin'
it at sight. After you've got it you may be pleased to death with
what's inside it an' then again you may not. So we settled mostly on
caramels for Katie. I said to Dave comin' home it was lucky men warn't
held down to one sort of candy like they are to one sort of wife, an'
he most laughed his head off. Then he asked me what kind of sweet I
thought Katie was, an' I told him I reckoned she was the caramel
variety, an' he said he thought so, too. We warn't fur wrong neither,
for she's turned out 'bout as we figgered. Mebbe she ain't got the
looks or the sparkle of the bonbons or jelly things, but she's worn
almighty well, an' made Dave a splendid wife."

"With all your excellent theories about women, I wonder you never
picked out a wife for yourself, Mr. Spence," Robert Morton remarked
mischievously.

"Me get married?" questioned Willie, staring at the speaker open-eyed
over the top of his spectacles.

"Why not?"

"Why, bless your heart, I never thought of it!" answered the little man
naively. "It's taken 'bout all my time to get other folks spliced
together. Besides," he added, "I've had my inventin'."

He glanced out of the window at a moving figure, then shot abruptly to
the door and called to some one who was passing:

"Hi, Jack!"

A man in coast-guard uniform waved his hand.

"How are you, Willie?" he shouted.

"All right," was the reply. "How are you an' Sarah Libbie makin' out?"

"Same as ever."

"You ain't said nothin' to her yet?"

Robert Morton saw the burly fellow in the road sheepishly dig his heel
into the sand.

"N--o, not yet."

"An' never will!" ejaculated the inventor returning wrathfully to the
shop. "That feller," he explained as he resumed his seat, "has been
upwards, of twenty years tryin' to tell Sarah Libbie Lewis he's in love
with her. He knows it an' so does she, but somehow he just ca