ents on his automobile; the balance paid for food, clothing,
water, light, and fuel, and supplied the wolf with sufficient allowance
to keep him from entering the parlor in the concrete. But the
philosopher, as all men must ultimately become, concluded to make the
best of his bad real estate investment. He resigned himself to a life of
perpetual, unaffected martyrdom. After all, it was his personal
diplomacy that was at fault--he should not have bought a pig in an
Ashcroft potato sack.

During the first year of their matrimonial failure they had rooms at the
"Best" Hotel, and the girls carried breakfast to the bride's room seven
mornings of every week at about 10.30, where the "invalid" devoured it
with such greed and relish that they became suspicious and talked "up
their sleeves" about her. Three days each week she had all meals carried
up to her, and the girls wondered how she could distribute so much
proteid about her system with so little exercise. The extreme
healthfulness of her constitution was the only thing that saved this
woman from dying of surfeit. The only occasions on which she would rise
from her lethargy was to attend a dance or social of some kind given at
Walhachin or Savona--she did not avoid one of them, and on those
occasions she would be the liveliest cricket on the hearth, the biggest
toad in the puddle, while the husband was pre-negotiating with the
physician for some more evaporated stock in the auto. How she ever got
home was a mystery, for she would be more disabled than ever for weeks
to come. Of course she had just overdone her constitutional
possibility--she said so herself, and she should know.

Whispers went abroad that she was lazy, and they became so loud that
hubby heard them over the wireless telephone. He became exasperated. "My
wife a hypocrite? Never! The people have hearts of stone--brains of
feathers--they do not understand."

One day--it had never occurred to him before--he suggested that they
consult a specialist in somnolence. But she would not hear of it; there
was nothing wrong with her; all she wanted was to be left alone. In a
short time hubby began to consider her in the light of a "white man's
burden," and had distorted visions of himself laboring through life with
an over-loaded back action.

One day the hotel proprietor advised him of a contemplated raise in his
assessment to re-imburse the business for extras in connection with
elevating so much food upstairs, wh