During the first year of their matrimonial failure they had rooms at the “Best” Hotel, and the girls carried breakfast to the bride’s room seven mornings of every week at about 10.30, where the “invalid” devoured it with such greed and relish that they became suspicious and talked “up their sleeves” about her.  Three days each week she had all meals carried up to her, and the girls wondered how she could distribute so much proteid about her system with so little exercise.  The extreme healthfulness of her constitution was the only thing that saved this woman from dying of surfeit.  The only occasions on which she would rise from her lethargy was to attend a dance or social of some kind given at Walhachin or Savona—­she did not avoid one of them, and on those occasions she would be the liveliest cricket on the hearth, the biggest toad in the puddle, while the husband was pre-negotiating with the physician for some more evaporated stock in the auto.  How she ever got home was a mystery, for she would be more disabled than ever for weeks to come.  Of course she had just overdone her constitutional possibility—­she said so herself, and she should know.

Whispers went abroad that she was lazy, and they became so loud that hubby heard them over the wireless telephone.  He became exasperated.  “My wife a hypocrite?  Never!  The people have hearts of stone—­brains of feathers—­they do not understand.”

One day—­it had never occurred to him before—­he suggested that they consult a specialist in somnolence.  But she would not hear of it; there was nothing wrong with her; all she wanted was to be left alone.  In a short time hubby began to consider her in the light of a “white man’s burden,” and had distorted visions of himself laboring through life with an over-loaded back action.

One day the hotel proprietor advised him of a contemplated raise in his assessment to re-imburse the business for extras in connection with elevating so much food upstairs, which was not part and parcel of the rules and regulations of the house in committee.  Besides, the accommodation was needless.

“Needless!” exclaimed hubby.  “Would you degenerate a lady and gentleman wilfully.  I will leave your fire-trap at once and cast anchor at the ‘Next Best.’” The proprietor argued that his competitor was welcome to such pickings, so he made no comment on the debate.

The “Next Best” was “full up,” as it always is, so they carried the living corpse out on a stretcher, and hubby went batching with his burden in a three-roomed house on Bancroft Street.  When it became hubby’s duty to cook the meals and carry half of them to bed for his better half every morning before breakfast he began to taste silly and smell sort of henpeck like.  He persisted humbly, lovingly, self-sacrificingly, henpeckedly, however, until one morning his sun rose brighter than it had ever done before and he saw a faint glimmer of light through the wool that was hanging in front of him.