water. He was one of those cold-water enthusiasts, this fellow; took it
himself for everything, and always went to a hydropathic establishment
for his holidays. Rumour had it that Meister Anton really did try this
experiment on one unfortunate occasion--worried into it, I suppose, by
the other chap's persistency. Anyhow, we didn't see him again for a
week, he being confined to his bed with a chill on the liver. And the
next suggestion made to him he rejected quite huffily, explaining that he
had no intention of putting any fresh ideas into his wife's head.

"She wasn't a bad woman, mind you--merely given to fits of temper. At
times she could be quite pleasant: but when she wasn't life with her must
have been exciting. He had stood it for about seven years; and then one
day, without a word of warning to anyone, he went away and left her. As
she was quite able to keep herself, this seemed to be the best
arrangement possible, and everybody wondered why he had never thought of
it before, I did not see him again for nine months, until I ran against
him by pure chance on the Koln platform, where I was waiting for a train
to Paris. He told me they had made up all their differences by
correspondence, and that he was then on his way back to her. He seemed
quite cheerful and expectant.

"'Do you think she's really reformed?' I says. 'Do you think nine months
is long enough to have taught her a lesson?' I didn't want to damp him,
but personally I have never known but one case of a woman being cured of
nagging, and that being brought about by a fall from a third-story
window, resulting in what the doctors called permanent paralysis of the
vocal organs, can hardly be taken as a precedent.

"'No,' he answers, 'nor nine years. But it's been long enough to teach
me a lesson.'