ing must have been done to it to make the
colours run.

[Sidenote: A Pitched Battle]

The short-sighted man at this juncture felicitates himself because the
two are getting on so well together. He never realises that a pitched
battle has occurred under his very nose, and that the honours are about
even.

If Tom possesses a particularly unfortunate flash-light photograph of
the girl, the bride joyfully frames it and puts it on the mantel where
all may see. If the original of the caricature remonstrates, the happy
wife sweetly temporises and insists that it remain, because "Tom is so
fond of it," and says, "it looks just like her."

Devious indeed are the paths of woman. She far excels the "Heathen
Chinee" in his famous specialty of "ways that are dark and tricks that
are vain."

Courtship is a game that a girl has to play without knowing the trump.
The only way she ever succeeds at it is by playing to an imaginary trump
of her own, which may be either open, disarming friendliness, or simple
indifference.

When a man finds the way to a woman's heart a boulevard, he has taken
the wrong road. When his path is easy and his burden light, it is time
for him to doubt. When his progress seems like making a new way to the
Klondike, he needs only to keep his courage and go on.

For, after all, it is woman who decides. A clever girl may usually marry
any man she sees fit to honour with the responsibility of her bills. The
ardent lover counts for considerably less than he is wont to suppose.

[Sidenote: The Only One They Know]

There is a good old scheme which the world of lovers has unanimously
adopted, in order to find out where they stand. It is so simple as to
make one weep, but it is the only one they know. This consists of an
intentional absence, judiciously timed.

Suppose a man has been spending three or four evenings a week with the
same girl, for a period of two or three months. Flowers, books, and
chocolates have occasionally appeared, as well as invitations to the
theatre. The man has been fed out of the chafing-dish, and also with
accidental cake, for men are as fond of sugar as women, though they are
ashamed to admit it.

Suddenly, without warning, the man misses an evening, then another, then
another. Two weeks go by, and still no man. The neighbours and the
family begin to ask questions of a personal nature.

It is at this stage that the immature and childish woman will write the
man a note, expressin