ng nice for
supper? The supper things were already on the table, and, after
tasting a mouthful--

"Who cooked this?" said he.

She was watching him intently--

"The girl did," she replied.

"I knew it," said he angrily, "it's beastly: you might have done it
yourself when you were not busy; a lot you care about what I like."

"I will do it to-morrow," she replied quietly.

"Yes do," said he, "there is no one can cook like you."

And she, still watching him intently, suddenly began to laugh--

He leaped up from the table and, after a stare of indignant
astonishment, he stalked off to bed--

"You are always giggling about nothing," said he, and he banged the
door.

THE HORSES

He was tall and she was short. He was bulky, promising to be fat. She
was thin, and, with a paring here and there, would have been skinny.
His face was sternly resolute, solemn indeed, hers was prim, and
primness is the most everlasting, indestructible trait of humanity. It
can outface the Sphinx. It is destructible only by death. Whoever has
married a prim woman must hand over his breeches and his purse, he will
collect postage stamps in his old age, he will twiddle his thumbs and
smile when the visitor asks him a question, he will grow to dislike
beer, and will admit and assert that a man's place is the home--these
things come to pass as surely as the procession of the seasons.

It may be asked why he had married her, and it would be difficult to
find an answer to that question. The same query might be put to almost
any couple, for (and it is possibly right that it should be so) we do
not marry by mathematics, but by some extraordinary attraction which is
neither entirely sexual nor mental. Something other than these,
something as yet uncharted by psychology, is the determining factor.
It may be that the universal, strange chemistry of nature, planning
granite and twig, ant and onion, is also ordering us more imperatively
and more secretly than we are aware.

He had always been a hasty creature. He never had any brains, and had
never felt the lack of them. He was one of those men who are called
"strong," because of their imperfect control over themselves. His
appetites and his mental states ruled him. He was impatient of any
restraint; whatever he wanted to do he wanted urgently to do and would
touch no alternatives. He had the robust good humour which will
cheerfully forgive you to-morrow for the wrongs he has done you to-da