ly.

"And the only time I ever overdrew my bank account," declared the
widow, "was the day after I had resolved to economize. I suppose," she
added pensively, "that the best way to begin would be to pick out the
worst vice and discard that."

"And that will leave heaps of room for the others and for a lot of new
little sins, besides, won't it?" agreed the bachelor cheerfully. "Well,"
he added philosophically, "I'll give up murdering."

"What!" The widow started.

"Don't you want me to?" asked the bachelor plaintively, rubbing his bald
spot. "Or perhaps I might resolve not to commit highway robbery any
more, or to stop forging, or----"

"All of which is so easy!" broke in the widow sarcastically.

"There'd be some glory and some reason in giving up a big vice," sighed
the bachelor, "if a fellow had one. But the trouble is that most of us
men haven't any big criminal tendencies, merely a heap of little follies
and weaknesses that there isn't any particular virtue in sacrificing or
any particular harm in keeping."

"And which you always do keep, in spite of all your New Year's vows,"
remarked the widow ironically.

"Huh!" The bachelor laughed cynically. "It's our New Year's vows that
help us to keep 'em. The very fact that a fellow has sworn to forego
anything, whether it's a habit or a girl, makes it more attractive. I've
thrown away a whole box of cigars with the finest intentions in the
world and then gotten up in the middle of the night to fish the pieces
out of the waste basket. And that midnight smoke was the sweetest I ever
had. It was sweeter than the apples I stole when I was a kid and than
the kisses I stole when----"

"If you came here to dilate on the joys of sin, Mr. Travers," began the
widow coldly.

"And," proceeded the bachelor, "I've made up my mind to stop flirting
with a girl, because I found out that she was beginning to--to----"

"I understand," interrupted the widow sympathetically.

"And by jove!" finished the bachelor, "I had to restrain myself to keep
from going back and proposing to her!"

"How lucky you did!" commented the widow witheringly.

"But I wouldn't have," explained the bachelor ruefully, "if the girl had
restrained herself."

"Nevertheless," repeated the widow, "is was lucky--for the girl."

"Which girl?" asked the bachelor. "The girl I broke off with or the girl
that came afterward?"

"I suppose," mused the widow, ignoring the levity and leaning over to
arrange a