little grave, as she is apt to do
at any suggestion of my sudden taking off, but with a sweet sigh she
answered, succinctly:

"There are certain risks in this world that a man has to take."

II

You may remember that I have four children; my namesake Fred, David,
who was christened in honor of his maternal grandfather, Josephine, or
Josie as we call her in order not to confound her with her mother, and
Winona, the baby of the family. We have lately moved into another
house. The old one would not hold us any longer. At least Josephine
declared that it would not shortly after the agents of the Board of
Health fumigated the establishment with sulphur to kill scarlet-fever
germs. She said it would be cheaper to move than to buy new
wall-papers and window-shades. When I asked how this could be she
waxed a little wroth at what she called my density, and asked if I did
not appreciate that we should have to move at any rate in a year or two
in order to provide the children with a bedroom apiece. The necessity
for this had not occurred to me, I must confess, and I was making bold
to inquire why the two boys could not continue to occupy one room and
their sisters another as in the past, when Josephine added, in an awful
whisper:

"Besides, the house is overrun with cockroaches. Now mind, Fred," she
continued, with an imperative frown, "that is a matter which is not to
be repeated to anyone."

"Why should I wish to repeat it?" I asked, meekly.

"I never know beforehand what you will repeat and what you will not. I
should expect to hear from Jemima Bolles the next time we met that you
had confided it to her husband, and positively I don't care to have her
know. Then, too," Josephine continued, with the manner of one
selecting a few of many grievances to air, "I haven't an inch of
unoccupied closet room; and, moreover, you remember, Fred, that the
plumber said the last time he was here that by good rights the plumbing
ought all to be renewed." My wife dwelt on these concluding words with
insinuating emphasis. She knows that I am daft, as she calls it, on
two points, closing windows on the eve of a thunder-shower and
defective drainage.

"He said that we could manage very well for some time longer without
the slightest real risk," I answered, doughtily.

Josephine's lower lip trembled. Presently she burst out, as though she
had resolved to throw feline argument and sophistic persuasion to the
winds, "I a