before her, never noticing the dog, so that, instead of pouring out
his heart as he had intended, he would have to start off with, 'So
awfully sorry! Hope I haven't hurt the little beast?' Which was
enough to put anybody out."

"Young girls are so foolish," said the Old Maid; "they run after
what glitters, and do not see the gold until it is too late. At
first they are all eyes and no heart."

"I knew a girl," I said, "or, rather, a young married woman, who was
cured of folly by the homoeopathic method. Her great trouble was
that her husband had ceased to be her lover."

"It seems to me so sad," said the Old Maid. "Sometimes it is the
woman's fault, sometimes the man's; more often both. The little
courtesies, the fond words, the tender nothings that mean so much to
those that love--it would cost so little not to forget them, and
they would make life so much more beautiful."

"There is a line of common sense running through all things," I
replied; "the secret of life consists in not diverging far from it
on either side. He had been the most devoted wooer, never happy out
of her eyes; but before they had been married a year she found to
her astonishment that he could be content even away from her skirts,
that he actually took pains to render himself agreeable to other
women. He would spend whole afternoons at his club, slip out for a
walk occasionally by himself, shut himself up now and again in his
study. It went so far that one day he expressed a distinct desire
to leave her for a week and go a-fishing with some other men. She
never complained--at least, not to him."