achelor. "Say you refused me."

"I did," said the widow promptly. "I wasn't looking for--remnants."

"Never mind!" retorted the bachelor. "Some day you may find I've been
grabbed up."

"You'll have lost all your--starch and style by then," said the widow as
she patted her back hair and started for the door.

The bachelor followed, putting on his gloves.

"How do you know that?" he asked, when they had bidden their hostess
good-afternoon and stood on the portico saying goodby.

"Well," said the widow, "it would take an artist to make you over. The
wrong woman would utterly ruin you."

"And who is the wrong woman?" The bachelor tried to look into the
widow's eyes beneath the purple feather.

But the widow only glanced out over the lawn and swung her parasol.

"Who is the wrong woman?" persisted the bachelor.

The widow studied the tip of her patent leather toe.

"Who is the wrong woman?"

The widow looked up suddenly under her violet feather.

"The other woman," she said softly, "of course."

X

MARRIAGE.

"ISN'T all this talk about 'trial marriages' absurd?" remarked the
widow, laying her newspaper on the tabourette and depositing two small
red kid toes on the edge of the fender.

"It is," agreed the bachelor, cheerfully, with his eyes on the red kid
toes, "considering that all marriages are--trials."

"Just fancy," went on the widow, scornfully, ignoring the flippancy,
"being leased to a husband or wife for a period of years, like a flat or
a yacht or--or----"

"A second-hand piano," suggested the bachelor.

"And knowing," continued the widow, gazing contemplatively into the
fire, "that when the lease or the contract or whatever it is expired,
unless the other party cared to renew it, you would be on the market
again."

"And probably in need of all sorts of repairs," added the bachelor,
reflectively, "in your temper and your complexion and your ideas."

"Yes," sighed the widow, "ten years of married life will rub all the
varnish off your manners, and all the color off your illusions and all
the finish off your conversation."

"And the hinges of your love making and your pretty speeches are likely
to creak every time you open your mouth," affixed the bachelor,
gloomily.

"And you are bound to be old-fashioned," concluded the widow, with
conviction, "and to compare badly with brand-new wives and husbands with
all the modern improvements. Besides," she continued, thoughtfully,
"even