f
her!--Little, young, a school-teacher, too, and taking poetry to read
on the train same as you or I would take a newspaper! Gee! What would
you expect?" Again his mouth began to twitch a little. "And I thought
it was her fault--'most all of the first year," he confessed
delightedly. "And then, all of a sudden," he continued eagerly, "all
of a sudden, one day, more mischievous-spiteful than anything else, I
says to her, 'We don't seem to be getting on so very well, do we?' And
she shakes her head kind of slow. 'No, we don't!' she says.--'Maybe
you think I don't treat you quite right?' I quizzed, just a bit
mad.--'No, you don't! That is, not--exactly right,' she says, and came
burrowing her head in my shoulder as cozy as could be.--'Maybe you
could show me how to treat you--righter,' I says, a little bit
pleasanter.--'I'm perfectly sure I could!' she says, half laughing and
half crying. 'All you'll have to do,' she says, 'is just to watch
me!'--'Just watch what _you_ do?' I said, bristling just a bit
again.--'No,' she says, all pretty and soft-like; 'all I want you to
do is to watch what I _don't_ do!'"

With slightly nervous fingers the Traveling Salesman reached up and
tugged at his necktie as though his collar were choking him suddenly.

"So that's how I learned my table manners," he grinned, "and that's
how I learned to quit cussing when I was mad round the house, and
that's how I learned--oh, a great many things--and that's how I
learned--" grinning broader and broader--"that's how I learned not to
come home and talk all the time about the 'peach' whom I saw on the
train or the street. My wife, you see, she's got a little scar on her
face--it don't show any, but she's awful sensitive about it, and
'Johnny,' she says, 'don't you never notice that I don't ever rush
home and tell _you_ about the wonderful _slim_ fellow who sat next to
me at the theater, or the simply elegant _grammar_ that I heard at the
lecture? I can recognize a slim fellow when I see him, Johnny,' she
says, 'and I like nice grammar as well as the next one, but praising
'em to you, dear, don't seem to me so awfully polite. Bragging about
handsome women to a plain wife, Johnny,' she says, 'is just about as
raw as bragging about rich men to a husband who's broke.'

"Oh, I tell you a fellow's a fool," mused the Traveling Salesman
judicially, "a fellow's a fool when he marries who don't go to work
deliberately to study and understand his wife. Women