as usher at her wedding, then dropped peacefully to the
next younger set, and now is going with girls of Pet Winterbotham's age.

I thoroughly like the boy, but I can't imagine myself falling in love with
him. If I were married to another man--an indiscreet thing for an Old Maid
to say, Tabby, but I only use it for illustration--I should not mind
Charlie Hardy's dropping in for Sunday dinner every week, if he wanted to.
He never bothers. He never is in the way. He is as deft at buttoning a
glove as he is amiable at playing cards. You always think of Charlie Hardy
first if you are making up a theatre party. He serves equally well as
groomsman or pall-bearer--although I do not speak from experience in
either instance. He never is cross or sulky. He makes the best of
everything, and I think men say that he is "an all-round good fellow."

I depend a great deal upon other men's opinion of a man. I never
thoroughly trust a man who is not a favorite with his own sex. I wish men
were as generous to us in that respect, for a woman whom other women do
not like is just as dangerous. And I never knew simple jealousy--the
reason men urge against accepting our verdict--to be universal enough to
condemn a woman. There always are a few fair-minded women in every
community--just enough to be in the minority--to break continuous
jealousy.

Be that as it may, the man I am talking about has kept up his acquaintance
with Rachel and Alice Asbury and me in a desultory way, and occasionally
he grows confidential. The last time I saw him he said:

"Sometimes I wish I were a woman, Ruth, when I get into so much trouble
with the girls. Women never seem to have any worry over love affairs. All
they have to do is to lean back and let men wait on them until they see
one that suits them. It is like ordering from a _menu_ card for them to
select husbands. You run over a list for a girl--oysters, clams, or
terrapin--and she takes terrapin. In the other case she runs over her own
list--Smith, Jones, or Robinson--and likewise takes the rarest. But she is
not at all troubled about it. Marrying is so easy for a girl. It comes
natural to her."

Tabby, I did wish that he knew as much of the internal mechanism of the
engagements that you and I have participated in, by proxy, as we do--if he
would understand, profit by, and speedily forget the knowledge.

But, like the hypocrite I am, I only smiled indulgently at him, as if, for
women, marrying was mere r