"What is your ideal?" asked the widow leaning over and peeping up under the bachelor's hat brim.
The bachelor stared back at her through lowered lashes.
"It's got on a violet hat," he began, "and violet——"
"Is that a ship out there?" asked the widow, suddenly becoming interested in the sea.
"And violet——"
"Oh, dear!" she interrupted petulantly. "Of course, you've got ideals. All men have ideals—but they don't often marry them. The trouble is that when a man has the marrying fever he can clothe anything in curls and petticoats with the illusions he has built around that ideal, and put the ideal's halo on her head and imagine she is the real thing. He can look at a red-headed, pug-nosed girl from an angle that will make her hair seem pure gold and her pug look Greek. By some mental feat, he can transform a girl six feet tall with no waist line and an acute elbow into a kittenish, plump little thing that he has always had in mind—and marry her. Or, if his ideal is tall and willowy and ethereal, and he happens to meet a woman weighing 200 pounds whose first thought in the morning is her breakfast and whole last thought at night is her dinner, he will picture her merely attractively plump and a marvel of intellect and imagination. And," the widow sank her chin in her hand and gazed out to sea reflectively, "it is all so pitiful, when you think how happy men could make marriage, if they would only go about it scientifically!"
"Then what," inquired the bachelor flinging away his cigar and folding his arms dramatically, "is the science of choosing a wife?"
"Well," said the widow, counting off on the tips of her lilac silk gloves, "first of all a man should never choose a wife when he finds himself feeling lonesome and dreaming of furnished flats and stopping to talk to babies in the street. He has the marrying fever then, and is in no fit condition to pick out a wife and unless he is very careful he is liable to marry the first girl who smiles at him. He should shut his eyes tight and flee to the wilderness and not come back until he is prepared to see women in their proper lights and their right proportions."
"And then?" suggested the bachelor.
"Then," announced the widow oratorically, "he should choose a wife as he would a dish at the table—not because he finds her attractive or delicious or spicy, but—because he thinks she will agree with him."