needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it.

"Well, from all my long experience, Molly," she said as she seated
herself and began to hem a tea-cloth with long steady stabs, "husbands
are just like sticks of candy in different jars. They may look a little
different, but they all taste alike, and you soon get tired of them.
In two months you won't know the difference in being married to Alfred
Bennett and Mr. Carter, and you'll have to go on living with him maybe
fifty years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place, and you can't
count on losing two husbands. Alfred's father was Mr. Johnson's first
cousin and had more crotchets and worse. He had silent spells that
lasted a week, and altogether gave his family a bad time of it. Alfred
looks very much like him."

"Mrs. Johnson," I said after a minute's silence, while I had decided
whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love
with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret, but I decided to
try Mrs. Johnson. "I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett,
though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that
telegram. But--but something has made me--made me think about Judge
Wade--that is he--what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson?" I concluded
in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice.

"All alike, Molly; all as much alike as peas in a pod; all except John
Moore, who's the only exception in all the male tribe I ever met! His
marrying once was just accidental and must be forgiven him. She fell in
love with him while he was attending her when she had typhoid, when his
back was turned as it were, and it was simple kindness in him that made
him marry her when he found out how it was with the poor thing. There's
not a woman in this town who could marry that wouldn't marry him at the
drop of his hat--but, thank goodness, that hat will never drop, and I'll
have one sensible man to comfort and doctor me down into my old age.
Now, just look at that! Mr. Johnson's come home here in the middle of
the morning, and I'll have to get that old paper I hunted out of his
desk for him last night. I wonder how he came to forget it!"

It's funny how Mrs. Johnson always knows what Mr. Johnson wants before
he knows himself and gets it before he asks for it!

As she went out of the gate the postman came in, and at the sight of
another letter my heart slunk off into my slippers, and my brain seemed
about to back up in a corner an