“Just think what it would be to marry a man, thinkin’ he was all trained, and to find out that it had been done wrong.  You’d have to begin all over again, and it’d be harder than startin’ in with absolute ignorance.  The man would get restless, too.  When he thought he was graduated and was about ready to begin on a post-graduate course, he’d find himself in the kindergarten, studyin’ with beads and singin’ about little raindrops.

“Gettin’ an idea into a man’s head is like furnishin’ a room.  If you can once get a piece of furniture where you want it, it can stay there until it’s worn out or busted, except for occasional dustin’ and repairin’.  You can add from time to time as you have to, but if you attempt to refurnish a room that’s all furnished, and do it all at once, you’re bound to make more disturbance than housecleanin’.

“It has to be done slow and careful, unless you have a likin’ for rows, and if you’re one of those kind of women that’s forever changin’ their minds about furniture and their husband’s ideas, you’re bound to have a terrible restless marriage.

“Roger’s pa was fresh when I took him, but, unbeknownst to me, he’d done his own furnishin’, and the pieces was dreadful set and hard to move.  Some of ’em I slid out gently and others took some manouverin’, but steady work tells on anythin’.  He was thinkin’ as I wanted him to about most things, though, when he died, and that’s sayin’ a good deal, for he didn’t die until after we’d been married seven years and three months and eighteen days.  If he wasn’t really thinkin’ right, he was pretendin’ to, and that’s enough to satisfy any reasonable woman.

[Sidenote:  The Will]

“Margaret Merriman’s pa died when she was at the tender age of ten, and he left all his money to a distant relation in trust for Margaret, the relative bein’ supposed to spend the income on her.  If Margaret died before she was of age, the relative was to keep it, and if she should marry before she was of age, the relative was to keep it, too.  But, livin’ to eighteen’ and marryin’ afterwards, it was all to be Margaret’s, and the relative wasn’t to have as much as a two-cent stamp with the mucilage licked off.

“This relative was a sweet-faced lady with a large mole on her right cheek.  Margaret used to call her ‘Moley,’ when she was mad at her, which was right frequent.  Her name was Magdalene Mather and she’d been married three times.  She was dreadful careless with her husbands and had mislaid ‘em all.  Not bein’ able to find ’em again, she just reckoned on their bein’ dead and was thinkin’ of marryin’ some more.

[Sidenote:  Keeping Margaret Young]

“Seems to me it’s a mistake for anybody to marry more’n once.  In one of Roger’s books it says somethin’ about a second marriage bein’ the triumph of hope over experience.  Magdalene Mather was dreadful hopeful and kept thinkin’ that maybe she could get somebody who would stay with her without bein’ chained up.  Meanwhile it was to her interest to keep little Margaret as young as possible.