"Well, on the surface it does look a little crooked."
"Crooked is not the word. Colonel Coffin, I know these widows. I have had my eye on them. They've got a way of bursting into a man's feelings and walking off with his affections that fills a modest woman like me with gall and bitterness. You know Mrs. Banger? No? Well, now, look at her, f'r instance. First she married Mr. Smyth, although what on earth he ever saw to admire about her I cannot imagine. That was her allowance. Having obtained Smyth, oughtn't she to have stood back and given some other woman a chance—now, oughtn't she?"
"Really, madam, I am hardly able to express an opinion."
"But no. After a while Smyth succumbed. He died. She entombed him, crying, mind you, all the time, as if, having lost Smyth, she wanted to die and join Smyth in the grave and in Paradise. But no sooner was he well settled than she began to flirt with Mr. Smith, and what does he do but yield to her blandishments and marry her? Took her, and seemed to glory in it.
"Now, you'd've thought that she'd've been satisfied with that, when she'd got the share of four women and a quarter. But pretty soon, as luck would have it, Smith, died and she hustled him into the grave. And in less than a year afterward I was amazed to hear that she was going to marry another Smyth. I was never more astonished in my life. Positively going to annex a third man, when the supply was too short anyway. Did you ever hear of such impudence? Did you, now?"
"I'll think it over and see if I can remember."
"Well, then, I thought for certain now that woman would knock off and give the rest of us some kind of a chance; and when Smyth was killed by cholera and interred, it never entered my head that that widow'd go after another man. But, bless your soul! she'd hardly got into second mourning before she began to pursue Mr. McFadden, and got him. Now, look at it. One woman, no better'n I am, has had the property of eight women and a half, and here I am single and getting on in life, with the chances growing absurdly small. No civilized country ought to tolerate such a thing. It's worse than piracy. You may scuttle a ship or blow her up or run her against the rocks, and no great harm is done, because timber's plenty and you can build another one. But when one woman scuttles three men and then ties to a fourth, what are you going to do about it? You can't go out into the woods and chop down trees and saw them up and tack them together and build a man. Now, can you?"
"That seems to be the common impression, anyway."
"Just so. And I want you to pass a bill through that Legislature to make it a felony for a widow to marry again. I've drawn up a draft of a bill and I'll leave it with you. I've made it retroactive, so that it'll bring that woman Banger up with a short turn and send her after Smith and the others. I don't care to marry, myself, but I want justice. Are you married?"
"Madam, leave the bill with me and I will examine it."