The widow studied her Sévres cup as the purple plume on her hat danced.
"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at the last moment and made over to fit the situation—which they never do."
The bachelor set down his teacup with the light of revelation in his eyes.
"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked out on purpose to act as shadows or—or satellites."
"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gifts. You can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of the lot."
"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor, "that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take the left-overs."
The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.
"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got it home, or how it will make up or whether it will fade or run or shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select something serviceable—dull and virtuous and worthy and all that—and he may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles——"
"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.
"Yes," agreed the widow, "and the wildest 'jolly good fellow' will often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."