Sitting alone in a secluded corner of the campus waiting for
Alfred to solve a problem in higher mathematics, Jimmy now
recalled fragments of Alfred's last conversation.

"No twelve dollar shoes and forty dollar hats for MY wife," his
young friend had raged and he condemned to Jimmy the wicked
extravagance of his own younger sisters. "The woman who gets me
must be a home-maker. I'll take her to the theatre occasionally,
and now and then we'll have a few friends in for the evening; but
the fireside must be her magnet, and I'll be right by her side
each night with my books and my day's worries. She shall be
taken into my confidence completely; and I'll take good care to
let her know, before I marry her, just what I expect in return."

"Alfred certainly has the right idea about marriage," mused
Jimmy, as the toe of his boot shoved the gravel up and down the
path. "There's just one impractical feature about it." He was
conscious of a slight feeling of heresy when he admitted even ONE
flaw in his friend's scheme of things. "Where is Alfred to find
such a wife?"

Jimmy ran through the list of unattached girls to whom Alfred had
thus far presented him. It was no doubt due to his lack of
imagination, but try as he would, he could not see any one of
these girls sitting by the fireside listening to Alfred's
"worries" for four or five nights each week. He recalled all the
married women whom he had been obliged, through no fault of his
own, to observe.