d woman,
a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her
ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she
was alive.

After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and social
aspects of towels she apologized to Babbitt for his having an alcoholic
headache; and he recovered enough to endure the search for a B.V.D.
undershirt which had, he pointed out, malevolently been concealed among
his clean pajamas.

He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit.

"What do you think, Myra?" He pawed at the clothes hunched on a chair in
their bedroom, while she moved about mysteriously adjusting and patting
her petticoat and, to his jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on with
her dressing. "How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another day?"

"Well, it looks awfully nice on you."

"I know, but gosh, it needs pressing."

"That's so. Perhaps it does."

"It certainly could stand being pressed, all right."

"Yes, perhaps it wouldn't hurt it to be pressed."

"But gee, the coat doesn't need pressing. No sense in having the whole
darn suit pressed, when the coat doesn't need it."

"That's so."

"But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them--look at those
wrinkles--the pants certainly do need pressing."

"That's so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn't you wear the brown coat with the
blue trousers we were wondering what we'd do with them?"

"Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear the coat of
one suit and the pants of another? What do you think I am? A busted
bookkeeper?"

"Well, why don't you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and stop in at
the tailor and leave the brown trousers?"

"Well, they certainly need--Now where the devil is that gray suit? Oh,
yes, here we are."

He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with comparative
resoluteness and calm.

His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. undershirt, in
which he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabard
at a civic pageant. He never put on B.V.D.'s without thanking the God of
Progress that he didn't wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments,
like his father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His second
embellishment was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him a
tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line.
But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.

There is character in spect