"The Lord!" said the widow scornfully. "It isn't the Lord who makes husbands. It's the wife!"

"And I always thought God made Adam," sighed the bachelor, humbly.

"Adam," said the widow promptly, as she dropped another lump of sugar into her tea, "wasn't a husband. He was only a man. And a man is only—raw material. He is like a ready-made frock or a ready-made coat; he has got to be cut down and built up and ironed out and taken in and to have all the raw edges trimmed off before he is properly——"

"Finished?" suggested the bachelor.

The widow nodded cheerfully.

"Yes," she agreed, "and adjusted to matrimony. And even then sometimes he is a dreadful botch."

"And all his style is gone," sighed the bachelor.

The widow studied her SÉvres cup thoughtfully.

"Well," she admitted, "sometimes the material is so bad or so skimpy—"

"So—what?"

The widow smiled patiently.

"Skimpy," she repeated. "There is so little to some men that the cleverest woman couldn't patch them up into a full-sized specimen. They are like the odds and ends left on the remnant counter. You have to do the best you can with them and then use Christian Science to make yourself believe they are all there and that the patches don't show. Haven't you ever seen magnificent women trailing little annexes after them like echoes or—or——"

"Captives in the wake of a conquering queen?" broke in the bachelor.

The widow studied her SÉvres cup as the purple plume on her hat danced.

"Those," she exclaimed, "are the bargain-counter husbands, picked up at the last moment and made over to fit the situation—which they never do."

The bachelor set down his teacup with the light of revelation in his eyes.

"And I always thought," he exclaimed solemnly, "that they were picked out on purpose to act as shadows or—or satellites."

"Picked out!" echoed the widow mockingly. "As if all women wouldn't be married to Greek gods or Napoleon Bonapartes or Wellingtons or Byrons if they could 'pick out' a husband. Husbands are like Christmas gifts. You can't choose them. You've just got to sit down and wait until they arrive; and sometimes they don't arrive at all. A woman doesn't 'pick out' a husband; she 'picks over' what's offered and takes the best of the lot."

"And sometimes you're so long picking them over," added the bachelor, "that the best ones are snapped up by somebody else and you have to take the left-overs."

The widow poised her spoon above her cup tentatively.

"Well," she sighed, "it's all a lottery anyhow. The girl who snaps up her first offer of marriage is as likely to get something good as the one who snaps her finger at it and waits for a Prince Charming until the last hour and then discovers that she has passed him by and that some other woman has taken him and made him over beautifully. And even if a girl had the whole world to select from, she wouldn't know how to choose. You never can tell by the way a thing looks under the electric light in the shop how it will look in broad daylight when you have got it home, or how it will make up or whether it will fade or run or shrink. And you never can tell by the way a man acts before marriage how he will come out in the wash of domesticity, or stand the wear and tear of matrimony. It's usually the most brilliant and catchy patterns of manhood that turn out to be cotton-backed after the gloss of the honeymoon has worn off. And on the other hand you may carefully select something serviceable—dull and virtuous and worthy and all that—and he may prove so stiff and lumpy and set in his ways and cross-grained and seamy and irritable that you will cultivate gray hairs and wrinkles——"

"Ironing him out?" suggested the bachelor.

"Yes," agreed the widow, "and the wildest 'jolly good fellow' will often tame down like a lamb or a pet pony in harness and will become a joy forever with a little trimming off and taking in and basting up."

"Humph," protested the bachelor, "but when you catch 'em wild and tame 'em, how do you know they are not going to break the harness or burst the basting threads?"

The widow considered a moment.

"You don't," she acknowledged grudgingly. "But there is a great deal in catching the wild variety and domesticating them while they are young. Of course, it's utterly impossible to subdue a lion after he has got his second teeth, and it's utterly foolish to try to reform a man—after he is thirty or has begun to lose his hair. Besides," she added, "there is so much in the woman who does the training and the making over. There are some women who could spoil the finest masculine cloth in the world by too much cutting and ripping and—and nagging; while there are others who can give a man or a house or a frock just the touch that will perfect them."

"How do they do it?" asked the bachelor enthusiastically. "Take 'em by the nape of the neck and——"

"Mercy, no!" cried the widow. "They take them unawares. The well-trained husband never knows what has happened to him. He only knows that, after ten years of matrimony, he is ashamed to acknowledge his own youthful picture. He has been literally re-formed in everything from his collars and the way he parts his hair to his morals and the way he signs his name. The best husbands aren't caught; they're made. And the luckiest woman isn't the one who marries the best man, but the one who makes the most out of the man she marries."

"But," protested the bachelor, "if we're such a lot and such a lottery, why do you marry us at all?"

The widow looked up in surprise and stopped with her cup poised in midair.

"Why do we wear frocks, Mr. Travers?" she asked witheringly. "Why do we pompadour our hair or eat with forks or go to pink teas? Marriage is a custom; and if a woman doesn't marry she is simply non—non——"

"Compos mentis?" inquired the bachelor, helpfully.

"Well, yes," said the widow, "but that wasn't what I meant. What is the Latin for 'not in it'? Her father looks at her accusingly every time he has to pay her dressmaker's bill and her mother looks at her commiseratingly every time she comes home without being engaged and all her friends look at her as if she were a curiosity or—or a failure. And besides, she misses her mission in life. That was what the Lord put Eve in the world for—to give the finishing touches to Adam."

"She finished him all right!" exclaimed the bachelor fervently.

"Making a living," went on the widow scorning the insinuation, "or making a career or making fame or a fortune isn't the real forte of woman. It's making a husband—out of a man."

"I should think," said the bachelor setting down his teacup and leaning back comfortably in his chair, "that they would form a corporation and set up a factory where they could turn 'em out by the dozen or the crate—or—-"

"Pooh!" cried the widow, "a husband is a work of art and has to be made by hand. He can't be turned out by machinery like a chromo or a lithograph. And, besides, if you want a ready-made one you can always find plenty of them on the second-hand counter——"

"On the—where?"

"Where they keep the widowers," explained the widow. "If a woman isn't interested or clever enough to manufacture her own husband, she can always find some man who has been modeled by another woman. And she has the satisfaction of knowing exactly what she's getting and just what to expect. The only trouble is that, in case she makes a mistake in her choice, she never has a chance to make him over. He has been cut down and relined and faced and patched already to his limit."

"And his seams are apt to be shiny and his temper frayed at the edges," declared the bachelor.

"And you have to be very sure that he fits your disposition."

"And matches your taste."

"And that he won't pinch on the bank account."

"Nor stretch on the truth."

"And that the other woman hasn't botched him."

"And even then he's a hand-me-down—and may shrink or run or—"

"Oh, widowers don't shrink or run," retorted the widow. "Matrimony is a habit with them, and they feel like a cab-horse out of harness without it. They long to feel the bit between their teeth and the gentle hand on the reins——"

"And the basting threads," added the bachelor. "I wonder what it's like," he went on, meditatively.

"You'll never know," said the widow, setting her cup on the tabourette. "You're too old."

"Yes, I've got my second teeth," sighed the bachelor.

"And your bald spot."

"And I've sown my second crop of wild oats."

"And yet," said the widow leaning her chin in her hand and looking up thoughtfully under her purple feather, "it would be a great triumph——"

"I won't be put in harness!" protested the bachelor.

The widow considered him gravely.

"There's plenty of material in you," she declared. "You could be trimmed off and cut down and——"

"I'm too tough to cut!"

"And relined."

"I'm almost moth-eaten now!" moaned the bachelor.

The widow leaned forward and scrutinized him with interest.

"It would be a pity," she said slowly, "to let the wrong woman botch you. The next time you propose to me," she added thoughtfully, "I think I'll——"

"Did I ever propose to you?" broke in the bachelor with real fright.

"Oh, lots of times," said the widow; "it's almost a habit now."

"But you refused me!" pleaded the bachelor. "Say you refused me."

"I did," said the widow promptly. "I wasn't looking for—remnants."

"Never mind!" retorted the bachelor. "Some day you may find I've been grabbed up."

"You'll have lost all your—starch and style by then," said the widow as she patted her back hair and started for the door.

The bachelor followed, putting on his gloves.

"How do you know that?" he asked, when they had bidden their hostess good-afternoon and stood on the portico saying goodby.

"Well," said the widow, "it would take an artist to make you over. The wrong woman would utterly ruin you."

"And who is the wrong woman?" The bachelor tried to look into the widow's eyes beneath the purple feather.

But the widow only glanced out over the lawn and swung her parasol.

"Who is the wrong woman?" persisted the bachelor.

The widow studied the tip of her patent leather toe.

"Who is the wrong woman?"

The widow looked up suddenly under her violet feather.

"The other woman," she said softly, "of course."