ter. They are much the same as one another when you get them
home. Doesn't do to be too fussy."

She is a careless woman. She is always mislaying that early husband. And
she has an unfortunate knack of finding him at the wrong moment. Perhaps
that is the Problem: What is a lady to do with a husband for whom she has
no further use? If she gives him away he is sure to come back, like the
clever dog that is sent in a hamper to the other end of the kingdom, and
three days afterwards is found gasping on the doorstep. If she leaves
him in the middle of South Africa, with most of the heavy baggage and all
the debts, she may reckon it a certainty that on her return from her next
honeymoon he will be the first to greet her.

Her surprise at meeting him again is a little unreasonable. She seems to
be under the impression that because she has forgotten him, he is for all
practical purposes dead.

"Why I forgot all about him," she seems to be arguing to herself, "seven
years ago at least. According to the laws of Nature there ought to be
nothing left of him but just his bones."

She is indignant at finding he is still alive, and lets him know it--tells
him he is a beast for turning up at his sister's party, and pleads to him
for one last favour: that he will go away where neither she nor anybody
else of any importance will ever see him or hear of him again. That's
all she asks of him. If he make a point of it she will--though her
costume is ill adapted to the exercise--go down upon her knees to ask it
of him.

He brutally retorts that he doesn't know where to "get." The lady
travels round a good deal and seems to be in most places. She accepts
week-end invitations to the houses of his nearest relatives. She has
married his first cousin, and is now getting up a bazaar with the help of
his present wife. How he is to avoid her he does not quite see.

Perhaps, by the by, that is really the Problem: where is the early
husband to disappear to? Even if every time he saw her coming he were to
duck under the table, somebody would be sure to notice it and make
remarks. Ought he to take himself out one dark night, tie a brick round
his neck, and throw himself into a pond?

What is a Lady to do with a Husband when she has finished with him?

But men are so selfish. The idea does not even occur to him; and the
lady herself is too generous to do more than just hint at it.

Maybe it is Society that is to blame. T