--sugar?" demanded the bachelor.

The widow shook her head smilingly.

"No," she said, "I'm saving that for another----"

"Another!"

"Another time," said the widow ambiguously as she let the door close
softly behind her.

IX

HER WAY.

"THERE," said the bachelor, as he nodded amiably at the big,
jolly-looking man beside the little, weazened woman, "is the best
husband the Lord ever made!"

"The Lord!" said the widow scornfully. "It isn't the Lord who makes
husbands. It's the wife!"

"And I always thought God made Adam," sighed the bachelor, humbly.

"Adam," said the widow promptly, as she dropped another lump of sugar
into her tea, "wasn't a husband. He was only a man. And a man is
only--raw material. He is like a ready-made frock or a ready-made coat;
he has got to be cut down and built up and ironed out and taken in and
to have all the raw edges trimmed off before he is properly----"

"Finished?" suggested the bachelor.

The widow nodded cheerfully.

"Yes," she agreed, "and adjusted to matrimony. And even then sometimes
he is a dreadful botch."

"And all his style is gone," sighed the bachelor.

The widow studied her Sevres cup thoughtfully.

"Well," she admitted, "sometimes the material is so bad or so skimpy--"

"So--what?"

The widow smiled patiently.

"Skimpy," she repeated. "There is so little to some men that the
cleverest woman couldn't patch them up into a full-sized specimen. They
are like the odds and ends left on the remnant counter. You have to do
the best you can with them and then use Christian Science to make
yourself believe they are all there and that the patches don't show.
Haven't you ever seen magnificent women trailing little annexes after
them like echoes or--or----"

"Captives in the wake of a conquering queen?" broke in the bachelor.

The widow studied her Sevres cup as the purple plume on her hat danced.

"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at
the last moment and made over to fit the situation--which they never
do."

The bachelor set down his teacup with the light of revelation in his
eyes.

"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked
out on purpose to act as shadows or--or satellites."

"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be
married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if
they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gift