guard to cover the deficiency. For example, if by some mortifying
combination of mischances, a dish is scantily supplied, he helps it
out lavishly, scrapes the bottom officiously, and with innocent
barbarity calls your attention to the fact that it needs replenishing.

"I tried once to hold my husband back from the brink of social
disaster," said one wife. "We sat opposite to one another at a dinner
party where the conversation neared a topic that would be, I knew,
extremely painful and embarrassing to our hostess. My John led the
talk--all unaware of the peril--and when the next sentence would, I
felt, be fatal, I pressed his foot under the table. What do you think
that blessed innocent did? Winced visibly and sharply--stopped short
in the middle of a word, and stared at me with pendulous jaw,
and--while everybody looked at him for the next breath--said,
resonantly--'_Jane! did you touch my foot?_'"

The incident is essentially John-esque. I am as positive as if I had
called for a comparison of experience, that every wife who reads this
could furnish a parallel sketch from life. The average John is
impervious to glance or gesture. I know one who is a model husband in
most respects, who, when a danger-signal is hung out from the other
end of the table, draws general attention in diplomatic fashion thus--

"Halloo! I have no idea what I have done or said, now! but when Madame
gives her three-cornered frown, I know there are reefs ahead, on the
starboard or the larboard side, and I'd better take my soundings."

Women are experts in this sort of telegraphy. From one of them, such
an _exposé_ would mean downright malice, or mischief, and be
understood as such. John's voiced bewilderment may be harmful, but it