"That's nothing. After Jeanette was born my hair began to fall out just
as if I had had typhoid"; or, "Both of mine, I am proud to say, were
bottle babies"; and once, as she listened, her heart might have been a
persimmon, puckering: "The idea for a woman of forty-five to have her
first! It's not fair to the child."

They could not, of course, articulate it, but the fact of the matter was
not alone that Mrs. Jett was childless (so was Mrs. Dang, who somehow
belonged), it was that they sensed, with all the antennae of their busy
little intuitions, the ascetic odor of spinsterhood which clung to Mrs.
Jett. She was a little "too nice." Would flush at some of the innuendoes
of the _contes intimes_, tales of no luster and dulled by soot, but in
spite of an inner shrinkage would loop up her mouth to smile, because
not to do so was to linger even more remotely outside the privileged rim
of the wedding band.

Evenings, after these gatherings, Mrs. Jett was invariably even a bit
gentler than her wont in her greetings to Mr. Jett.

Of course, they kissed upon his arrival home, comment to the contrary
notwithstanding, in a taken-for-granted fashion, perhaps, but there was
something sweet about their utter unexcitement; and had the afternoon
session twisted her heart more than usual, Mrs. Jett was apt to place a
second kiss lightly upon the black and ever so slightly white mustache,
or lay her cheek momentarily to his, as if to atone by thus yearning
over him for the one aching and silent void between them.

But in the main Henry Jett was a contented and happy man.

His wife, whom he had met at a church social and wooed in the front of
the embroidery and fancy-goods store, fitted him like the proverbial
glove--a suede one. In the eight years since, his fish business had
almost doubled, and his expenses, if anything, decreased, because more
and more it became pleasanter to join in the evening game of no-stakes
euchre down in the front parlor or to remain quietly upstairs, a
gas lamp on the table between them, Mr. Jett in a dressing gown of
hand-embroidered Persian design and a newspaper which he read from first
to last; Mrs. Jett at her tranquil process of fine needlework.

Their room abounded in specimens of it. Centerpieces of rose design.
Mounds of cushions stamped in bulldog's head and pipe and appropriately
etched in colored floss. A poker hand, upheld by realistic five fingers
embroidered to the life, and the cuff button