"it takes more than a hint to stop a
woman when she takes a notion to nurse an attractive man, a sick lion one
at that. And depend upon it, it is the poetry that makes them hover him,
not the ribs."

"Well, you just stop her and that'll stop them," said David wrathfully.

"David Kildare," answered the major dryly, "I've been married to her
nearly forty years and I've never stopped her doing anything yet.
Stopping a wife is one of the bride-notions a man had better give up
early in the matrimonial state--if he expects to hold the bride. And
bride-holding ought to be the life-job of a man who is rash enough to
undertake one."

"Do you think Phoebe and bride will ever rhyme together, Major?" asked
David in a tone of deepest depression. "I can't seem to hear them ever
jingle."

"Yes, Dave, the Almighty will meter it out to her some day, and I hope He
will help you when He does. I can't manage my wife. She's a modern woman.
Now, what are we going to do about them?" and the major smiled
quizzically at the perturbed young man standing on the rug in front of
the fire.

"Well," answered Kildare with a spark in his eyes, as he flecked a bit of
mud from his boots which were splashed from his morning ride, "when I get
Phoebe Donelson, I'm going to whip her!" And very broad and tall and
strong was young David but not in the least formidable as to expression.

"Dave, my boy," answered the major in a tone of the deepest respect, "I
hope you will do it, if you get the chance; but you won't! Thirty-eight
years ago last summer I felt the same way, but I've had a long time to
make up my mind to it; and I haven't done it yet."

"Anyway," rejoined his victim, "there's just this to it; she has got to
accept me kindly, affectionately and in a ladylike manner or I'm going to
be the villain and make some sort of a rough house to frighten her into
it."

"David," said the major with emphasis, "don't count on frightening a
woman into a compliance in an affair of the affections. Don't you know
they will risk having their hearts suspended on a hair-line between
heaven and hell and enjoy it? Now, my wife--"

"Oh, Mrs. Matilda never could have been like that," interrupted David
miserably.

"Boy," answered the major solemnly, "if I were to give you a succinct
account of the writhings of my soul one summer over a California man, the
agony you are enduring would seem the extremity of insignificance."

"Heavenly hope, Major, did you have to