“I think that was what I was designed for,” laughed Mrs. Carraway.  “Of course I do.”

“Oh! but what I mean is that you take utterly ridiculous and extreme cases.  The things never could happen.  Who’d ever dream of making a beehive out of a megaphone?”

“Oh, I think it might occur to the same ingenious mind that discovered that a cloisonne vase would hold golf-balls,” smiled Mrs. Carraway.

Carraway laughed.  “There you go again,” he said.  “I wonder why women can’t argue without becoming ridiculous?  It would be mighty poor economy to pay $4 for a megaphone as a substitute for a $2 beehive.”

“That is true,” said Mrs. Carraway.  “I never thought of that.”

“Of course you didn’t,” retorted Carraway, triumphantly.  “Of course you didn’t; and that’s what I mean when I say you argue like a woman.  You get hold of what seems on the surface to be a regular solar-plexus retort, and fail to see how it becomes a boomerang before you can say Jack Robinson.”

“I suppose if I hadn’t been worried about the vase I would have thought of it,” said Mrs. Carraway, meekly.  “It worries me to see a $150 vase used for a purpose that a fifty-cent calico bag would serve quite as well.”

Carraway glanced searchingly at his wife.

“Well—­ah—­hem!” he said.  “Quite right, my dear, quite right.  I think, on the whole, you would better get the calico bag.”

For a few days after this little discussion Carraway was very reticent about his utilitarian ideas.  The more he thought of his wife’s retort the less secure he felt in his own position, and he was very sorry he had spoken about boomerangs and solar-plexus retorts.  But with time he recovered his equanimity, and early in December returned to his old ways.

“I’ve just been up in the attic,” he said to his wife one Sunday afternoon, when he appeared on the scene rather dusty of aspect.  “There’s a whole lot of useful stuff up there going to waste.  I found four old beaver hats, any one of which would make a very good waste-basket for the spare bedroom if it was suitably trimmed; and I don’t see why you don’t take these straw hats of mine and make work-baskets of them.”  Here he held out two relics of bygone fashions to his wife.  Mrs. Carraway took them silently.  She was so filled with suppressed laughter over her husband’s suggestions that she hardly dared to speak lest she should give way to her mirth, and a man does not generally appreciate mirth at his own expense after he has been rummaging in an attic for an hour or more, filling his lungs and covering his clothes and hands with dust.

However, after a moment she managed to blurt out, “Perhaps I can make one of them dainty enough to send to your mother for her Christmas present.”

“I was about to suggest that very same thing,” said Carraway, brushing the dust from his sleeve.  “Either you could send it or Mollie”—­Mollie was Mr. Carraway’s small daughter.  “I think Mollie’s grandmother would be more pleased with a gift of that kind than with one of the useless little fallals that children give their grandparents on Christmas Day.  What did she give her last year?”