didn't wink at me malicious, then I don't know malice when I see it. An'
she used her fingers against her nose, too, most defiant and impolite.
So I says to puss I says, 'Puss,' I says, 'there's _goin's on_ in that
hotel, sure as fate. Annabel Bender has got the better o' me, for
once!' An', tell the truth, it did spoil the photograph for me for a
while, for, of course, after that, if I didn't see him somewheres on the
watch for his faithful spouse, I'd say to myself, 'He's inside there
with that pink-featured hussy!'

"You know, a man's a man, Mis' Withers--'specially Morris, an' with his
lawful wife cut off an' indefinitely divorced by a longevitied
family--an' another burned in with him--well, his faithfulness is put to
a trial by fire, as you might say. So, as I say, it spoiled the picture
for me, for a while.

"An', to make matters worse, it wasn't any time before I recollected
that Campbellite preacher thet was burned in with them, an' with that my
imagination run riot, an' I'd think to myself, '_If_ they're inclined,
they cert'n'y have things handy!' Then I'd ketch myself an' say,
'Where's your faith in Scripture, Mary Marthy Matthews, named after two
Bible women an' born daughter to an apostle? What's the use?' I'd say,
an' so, first an' last, I'd get a sort o' alpha an' omega comfort out o'
the passage about no givin' in marriage. Still, there'd be times, pray
as I would, when them three would loom up, him an' her--_an'_ the
Campbellite preacher. I know his license to marry would run out _in
time_, but for eternity, of course we don't know. Seem like everything
would last forever--an' then again, if I've got a widow's freedom,
Morris must be classed as a widower, if he's anything.

"Then I'd get some relief in thinkin' about his disposition. Good as he
was, Morris was fickle-tasted, not in the long run, but day in an' day
out, an' even if he'd be taken up with her he'd get a distaste the
minute he reelized she'd be there interminable. That's Morris. Why,
didn't he used to get nervous just seein' _me_ around, an' me his own
selected? An' didn't I use to make some excuse to send him over to Mame
Maddern's ma's ma's--so's he'd be harmlessly diverted? She was full o'
talk, and she was ninety-odd an' asthmatic, but he'd come home from them
visits an' call me his child wife. I've had my happy moments!

"You know a man'll get tired of himself, even, if he's condemned to it
too continual, and think of that blondinet