"Perhaps," agreed the widow leaning back and thoughtlessly putting her red kid toes on the fender again, "but when two horses are going to travel together it is always best for them to get used to one another's gait from the first. Don't you look at it that way?"
"Which way?" asked the bachelor, squinting at the fender with his head on the side.
"Fancy," said the widow not noticing the deflection, "marrying a man who had been encouraged to take an interest in the household affairs and having him following you about picking up things after you; or one, whose first wife had trained him to sit by the fire in the evening, and whom it took a derrick to get to the theatre or a dinner party; or one who had been permitted to smoke a pipe and put his feet all over the furniture and growl about the meals and boss the cook!"
"Or to a wife," interpolated the bachelor, "who had always handled the funds and monopolized the conversation and chosen her husband's collars and who threw all her past husbands at you every time you did something she wasn't used to or objected to something she was used to."
"Yes," agreed the widow with a little shiver, "what horrid things two people could say to one another."
"Such as 'Just wait until the lease is up!'" suggested the bachelor.
The widow nodded.
"Or, 'The next time I marry, I'll be careful not to take anybody with red hair,' or, 'Thank goodness it won't last forever!'" she added.
"That's the beauty of it!" broke in the bachelor enthusiastically. "It wouldn't last forever! And the knowledge that it wouldn't would be such an anæsthetic."
"Such a what!" the widow sat up so suddenly that both toes slipped from the fender and her heels landed indignantly on the floor.