"Mercy, no!" cried the widow. "They take them unawares. The well-trained husband never knows what has happened to him. He only knows that, after ten years of matrimony, he is ashamed to acknowledge his own youthful picture. He has been literally re-formed in everything from his collars and the way[126] he parts his hair to his morals and the way he signs his name. The best husbands aren't caught; they're made. And the luckiest woman isn't the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the most out of the man she marries."

[126]

"But," protested the bachelor, "if we're such a lot and such a lottery, why do you marry us at all?"

The widow looked up in surprise and stopped with her cup poised in midair.

"Why do we wear frocks, Mr. Travers?" she asked witheringly. "Why do we pompadour our hair or eat with forks or go to pink teas? Marriage is a custom; and if a woman doesn't marry she is simply non—non——"[127]

[127]

"Compos mentis?" inquired the bachelor, helpfully.

"Well, yes," said the widow, "but that wasn't what I meant. What is the Latin for 'not in it'? Her father looks at her accusingly every time he has to pay her dressmaker's bill and her mother looks at her commiseratingly every time she comes home without being engaged and all her friends look at her as if she were a curiosity or—or a failure. And besides, she misses her mission in life. That was what the Lord put Eve in the world for—to give the finishing touches to Adam."

"She finished him all right!" exclaimed the bachelor fervently.

"Making a living," went on the widow scorning the insinuation, "or making a career or making fame or[128] a fortune isn't the real forte of woman. It's making a husband—out of a man."

[128]

"I should think," said the bachelor setting down his teacup and leaning back comfortably in his chair, "that they would form a corporation and set up a factory where they could turn 'em out by the dozen or the crate—or—-"

"Pooh!" cried the widow, "a husband is a work of art and has to be made by hand. He can't be turned out by machinery like a chromo or a lithograph. And, besides, if you want a ready-made one you can always 

 Prev. P 46/65 next