“Halloo!  I have no idea what I have done or said, now! but when Madame gives her three-cornered frown, I know there are reefs ahead, on the starboard or the larboard side, and I’d better take my soundings.”

Women are experts in this sort of telegraphy.  From one of them, such an expose would mean downright malice, or mischief, and be understood as such.  John’s voiced bewilderment may be harmful, but it is as guileless as a baby’s.  It may be true that men are deceivers ever, in money or love affairs.  In everyday home life, there is about the most sophisticated, a simplicity of thought and word, a transparency of motive, and, when vanity is played upon cunningly, a naive gullibility—­that move us to wondering admiration.  It, furthermore, I grieve to admit, furnishes manoeuvring wives with a ready instrument for the accomplishment of their designs.

For another fixed fact in the natural history of John is that, however kindly and intelligent and reasonable he may be—­he needs, in double harness, to be cleverly managed, to be coaxed and petted up to what else would make him shy.  If driven straight at it, the chances are forty-eight out of fifty that he will balk or bolt.

A stock story of my girlish days was of a careless, happy-go-lucky housewife, who, upon the arrival of unexpected guests, told her maid “not to bother about changing the cloth, but to set plates and dishes so as to humor the spots.”

She is a thrifty, not a slovenly manager, who accommodates the trend of daily affairs to humor her John’s peculiarities and foibles; who ploughs around stumps, and, instead of breaking the share in tough roots, eases up, and goes over them until they decay of themselves.  In really good ground they leave the soil the richer for having suffered natural decomposition.  If John is prone to savagery when hungry (and he usually is), our wise wife will wait until he has dined before broaching matters that may ruffle his spirit.

It is more than likely that he has the masculine bias toward wet-blanketism that tries sanguine women’s souls more sorely than open opposition.  Some Johns make it a point of manly duty to discourage at first hearing any plan that has originated with a woman.  I am fond of John, but this idiosyncrasy cannot be ignored.  Nor is it entirely explicable upon any principle known in feminine ethics, unless it be intended by Providence as a counterweight to the womanly proclivity to see but one side of a question when we are interested in carrying it to a vote.  John is as positive that there are two sides to everything, as Columbus was that the Eastern Hemisphere must have something to balance it.  When Mary looks to him for instant assent and earnest sympathy, he casts about for objections, and sets them in calm array.  She may have demonstrated in a thousand instances her ability to judge and act for herself, and may preface her exposition of the case in hand by saying that she has given it mature deliberation.  It never occurred to him until she mentioned it; he may have sincerest respect for her sense and prudence—­the chances are, nevertheless, a thousand to one that he will begin his reply with—­