bout us when we
are sick and sorry, when we feel in every fibre what poor things we are,
and when all our fortitude is needed to enable us to bear our temporary
inferiority patiently, without being forced besides to assume an
attitude of eager and grovelling politeness towards the angel in the
house."

There was a pause.

"I didn't know you could talk so much, Sage," said Irais at length.

"What would you have women do, then?" asked Minora meekly. Irais began
to beat her foot up and down again,--what did it matter what Men of
Wrath would have us do? "There are not," continued Minora, blushing,
"husbands enough for every one, and the rest must do something."

"Certainly," replied the oracle. "Study the art of pleasing by dress and
manner as long as you are of an age to interest us, and above all,
let all women, pretty and plain, married and single, study the art
of cookery. If you are an artist in the kitchen you will always be
esteemed."

I sat very still. Every German woman, even the wayward Irais, has
learned to cook; I seem to have been the only one who was naughty and
wouldn't.

"Only be careful," he went on, "in studying both arts, never to forget
the great truth that dinner precedes blandishments and not blandishments
dinner. A man must be made comfortable before he will make love to you;
and though it is true that if you offered him a choice between Spickgans
and kisses, he would say he would take both, yet he would invariably
begin with the Spickgans, and allow the kisses to wait."

At this I got up, and Irais followed my example. "Your cynicism is
disgusting," I said icily.

"You two are always exceptions to anything I may say," he said, smiling
amiably.

He stooped and kissed Irais's hand. She is inordinately vain of her
hands, and says her husband married her for their sake, which I can
quite believe. I am glad they are on her and not on Minora, for if
Minora had had them I should have been annoyed. Minora's are bony, with
chilly-looking knuckles, ignored nails, and too much wrist. I feel very
well disposed towards her when my eye falls on them. She put one forward
now, evidently thinking it would be kissed too.

"Did you know," said Irais, seeing the movement, "that it is the custom
here to kiss women's hands?"

"But only married women's," I added, not desiring her to feel out of it,
"never young girls'."

She drew it in again. "It is a pretty custom," she said with a sigh; and
pensively ins