"

"Oh, widows!" interrupted the widow impatiently, "They're different.
They're like heirlooms--only parted with at death. But it would be
different with a wife who was relinquished because she wasn't wanted. If
anybody is anxious to get rid of something it is a pretty sure sign that
it isn't worth having. It's nearly always got a flaw somewhere and it's
seldom what it is represented to be. Besides, I've noticed that the
woman who can't get along with one husband, usually finds it just as
difficult to get along with another."

"There would always be the chance," protested the bachelor, "that you
might get the party who had done the discarding."

"And who might want to do it again," objected the widow triumphantly.
"Just imagine," she added irrelevantly, "living with a person whom
somebody else had trained!"

"Oh, that would have its advantages," declared the bachelor. "A horse
broken to harness is always easier to handle."

"Perhaps," agreed the widow leaning back and thoughtlessly putting her
red kid toes on the fender again, "but when two horses are going to
travel together it is always best for them to get used to one another's
gait from the first. Don't you look at it that way?"

"Which way?" asked the bachelor, squinting at the fender with his head
on the side.

"Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man who
had been encouraged to take an interest in the household affairs and
having him following you about picking up things after you; or one,
whose first wife had trained him to sit by the fire in the evening, and
whom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or one
who had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over the
furniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"

"Or to a wife," interpolated the bachelor, "who had always handled the
funds and monopolized the conversation and chosen her husband's collars
and who threw all her past husbands at you every time you did something
she wasn't used to or objected to something she was used to."

"Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid things two
people could say to one another."

"Such as 'Just wait until the lease is up!'" suggested the bachelor.

The widow nodded.

"Or, 'The next time I marry, I'll be careful not to take anybody with
red hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.

"That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "It