you marry again? That would settle all your
difficulties," and Tom looked at his friend with a sort of wonder that
he should hesitate to take this practical, sensible course.

"It's very easy for you to say, 'Why don't you marry again?' If you
were in my place you'd see that there are things in the way of marrying
for the sake of having a good butter maker and all that kind of thing."

"Mr. Watterly wouldn't be long in comforting himself," remarked his
wife.--"His advice to you makes the course he'd take mighty clear."

"Now, Angy!" said Tom reproachfully. "Well," he added with a grin,
"you're forewarned. So you've only to take care of yourself and not
give me a chance."

"The trouble is," Holcroft resumed, "I don't see how an honest man is
going to comfort himself unless it all comes about in some natural sort
of way. I suppose there are people who can marry over and over again,
just as easy as they'd roll off a log. It aint for me to judge 'em,
and I don't understand how they do it. You are a very practical man,
Tom, but just you put yourself in my shoes and see what you'd do. In
the first place, I don't know of a woman in the world that I'd think of
marrying. That's saying nothing against the women,--there's lots too
good for me,--but I don't know 'em and I can't go around and hunt 'em
up. Even if I could, with my shy, awkward ways, I wouldn't feel half
so nervous starting out on a bear hunt. Here's difficulty right at the
beginning. Supposing I found a nice, sensible woman, such as I'd be
willing to marry, there isn't one chance in a hundred she'd look at an
old fellow like me. Another difficulty: Supposing she would; suppose
she looked me square in the eyes and said, 'So you truly want a wife?'
what in thunder would I say then?--I don't want a wife, I want a
housekeeper, a butter maker, one that would look after my interests as
if they were her own; and if I could hire a woman that would do what I
wish, I'd never think of marrying. I can't tell a woman that I love
her when I don't. If I went to a minister with a woman I'd be
deceiving him, and deceiving her, and perjuring myself promiscuously.
I married once according to law and gospel and I was married through
and through, and I can't do the thing over again in any way that would
seem to me like marrying at all. The idea of me sitting by the fire
and wishing that the woman who sat on the t'other side of the stove was
my first wife! Yet I couldn'