kissed and laughed and packed a basket, and kissed and laughed again for
good-bye. I felt amused and happy for a few minutes--and also deserted.
It's a very good thing for a woman's conceit to find out how many of her
lovers are just make-believes. I may have needed Tom's deflection.

Anyway, I don't know when I ever was so glad to see anybody as I was
when Mrs. Johnson came in the front door. A woman who has proved to her
own satisfaction that marriage is a failure is at times a great tonic to
other women. I needed a tonic badly this morning and I got it.

"Well, from all my long experience, Molly," she said as she seated
herself and began to hem a tea-cloth with long steady stabs, "husbands
are just like sticks of candy in different jars. They may look a little
different, but they all taste alike, and you soon get tired of them.
In two months you won't know the difference in being married to Alfred
Bennett and Mr. Carter, and you'll have to go on living with him maybe
fifty years. Luck doesn't strike twice in the same place, and you can't
count on losing two husbands. Alfred's father was Mr. Johnson's first
cousin and had more crotchets and worse. He had silent spells that
lasted a week, and altogether gave his family a bad time of it. Alfred
looks very much like him."

"Mrs. Johnson," I said after a minute's silence, while I had decided
whether or not I had better tell her all about it. If a woman's in love
with her husband you can't trust her to keep a secret, but I decided to
try Mrs. Johnson. "I really am not engaged exactly to Alfred Bennett,
though I suppose he thinks so by now if he has got the answer to that
telegram. But--but something has made me--made me think about Judge
Wade--that is he--what do you think of him, Mrs. Johnson?" I concluded
in the most pitifully perplexed tone of voice.