e careless hens had delivered two cracked
eggs out of one unhappy dozen to Mary. With a directness of address
seldom met with in good society, Mary thus delivered herself down the
dumb-waiter, 'Well, damn you for a groceryman--'"

"Oh, Aubrey! Did she say that word?"

"She said just that. 'When we are paying a dollar a look at eggs, what
do you mean by sending me two cracked ones out of twelve? To be sure
_somebody_ has been sitting on these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a
hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon,
and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd
give five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old
woman's face, for she talks for all the world just like my own mother.'
And with that he exchanged the two cracked eggs for two perfect ones
out of another order, and took the good ones in to Mary."

"I wonder if it will last," I said to a woman who was envying the fact
that I could persuade Aubrey to go out with me whenever I wanted him to.

"It _won't_ last!" she declared, cheerfully. "And it won't last that
Mr. Jardine will go calling with you evenings. The clubs will claim
him within six months, and as for Mary--I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'll wager you a ten-pound box of candy that within a year you will
have lost both your husband and your cook."

"Lost my husband," I cried, my face stiffening.

"Oh, I only mean as we all lose our husbands," she explained, airily.
"I used to have Jack, but I am married now to golf links and the club."

"I'll take your bet," I said.

"You'll lose," she laughed. "They are both too perfect to last."

"They are not!" I cried.

But when the door closed, I rapped on wood.

CHAPTER II

THEORIES

If there is anything more delightful than to furnish one's first home,
I have yet to discover it. Aubrey says that "moving in goes it one
better," but his preference is based on the solid satisfaction he takes
in putting in two shelves where one grew before and in providing
towel-racks and closet-hooks wherever there is an inviting wall-space
for them.

But to me, even the list I made out and changed and figured on and
priced before I made a single purchase was full of possibilities, and
contained wild flutters of excitement on account of certain innovations
I wished to try.

"Aubrey," I said one evening as the Angel sat reading Draper's
"Intellectual Development of Europe," "have you