"I don't want to make any more money."

"I don't want you to. I mean a job where you'd lose a lot and be scared
into thanking Heaven for carfare. _You're_ a nice object for the
breakfast table!"

"Bridge. I will be amiable enough by noon time."

"Yes, you're endurable by noon time, as a rule. When you're forty you
may be tolerated after five o'clock; when you're fifty your wife and
children might even venture to emerge from the cellar after dinner--"

"Wife!"

"I said wife," replied Kerns, as he calmly watched his man.

He had managed it well, so far, and he was wise enough not to overdo it.
An interval of silence was what the situation required.

"I wish I _had_ a wife," muttered Gatewood after a long pause.

"Oh, haven't you said that every day for five years? Wife! Look at the
willing assortment of dreams playing Sally Waters around town. Isn't
this borough a bower of beauty--a flowery thicket where the prettiest
kind in all the world grow under glass or outdoors? And what do you do?
You used to pretend to prowl about inspecting the yearly crop of posies,
growling, cynical, dissatisfied; but you've even given that up. Now you
only point your nose skyward and squall for a mate, and yowl mournfully
that you never have seen your ideal. _I_ know _you_."