young girl like that, or her me, Carrie, any
more than I could satisfy Alma. It was one of those mamma-made matches
that we got into because we couldn't help it and out of it before it was
too late. No, no, Carrie, what I want is a woman as near as possible to
my own age."

"Loo, I--I couldn't start in with you even with the one little lie that
gives every woman a right to be a liar. I'm forty-three, Louis--nearer
to forty-four. You're not mad, Loo?"

"God love it! If that ain't a little woman for you! Mad? Why, just your
doing that little thing with me raises your stock fifty per cent."

"I'm--that way."

"We're a lot alike, Carrie. For five years I've been living in this
hotel because it's the best I can do under the circumstances. But at
heart I'm a home man, Carrie, and unless I'm pretty much off my guess,
you are, too--I mean a home woman. Right?"

"Me all over, Loo. Ask Alma if--"

"I've got the means, too, Carrie, to give a woman a home to be proud
of."

"Just for fun, ask Alma, Loo, if one year since her father's death I
haven't said, 'Alma, I wish I had the heart to go back housekeeping.'"

"I knew it!"

"But I ask you, Louis, what's been the incentive? Without a man in the
house I wouldn't have the same interest. That first winter after my
husband died I didn't even have the heart to take the summer covers off
the furniture. Alma was a child then, too, so I kept asking myself, 'For
what should I take an interest?' You can believe me or not, but half the
time with just me to eat it, I wouldn't bother with more than a cold
snack for supper, and everyone knew what a table we used to set. But
with no one to come home evenings expecting a hot meal--"

"You poor little woman! I know how it is. Why, if I so much as used to
telephone that I couldn't get home for supper, right away I knew the
little mother would turn out the gas under what was cooking and not eat
enough herself to keep a bird alive."

"Housekeeping is no life for a woman alone. On the other hand, Mr.
Latz--Louis--Loo, on my income, and with a daughter growing up, and
naturally anxious to give her the best, it hasn't been so easy. People
think I'm a rich widow, and with her father's memory to consider and
a young lady daughter, naturally I let them think it, but on my
seventy-four hundred a year it has been hard to keep up appearances in a
hotel like this. Not that I think you think I'm a rich widow, but just
the same, that's me every time