anything--anything," reiterated the lady recklessly, "to see
Christopher more like the ordinary sort of man."

"But he has always been the sort--the sort of man he is," her bosom
friend reminded her.

"Oh, during the engagement, of course, one expects a man to be
perfect. I didn't think he was going to keep it up."

"He seems to me," said Miss Greene, "a dear, good fellow. You are one
of those people who never know when they are well off."

"I know he is a good fellow," agreed Mrs. Korner, "and I am very fond
of him. It is just because I am fond of him that I hate feeling
ashamed of him. I want him to be a manly man, to do the things that
other men do."

"Do all the ordinary sort of men swear and get occasionally drunk?"

"Of course they do," asserted Mrs. Korner, in a tone of authority.
"One does not want a man to be a milksop."

"Have you ever seen a drunken man?" inquired the bosom friend, who was
nibbling sugar.

"Heaps," replied Mrs. Korner, who was sucking marmalade off her
fingers.

By which Mrs. Korner meant that some half a dozen times in her life
she had visited the play, choosing by preference the lighter form of