“Margaret got to doin’ some thinkin’ about herself, and wonderin’ why it was she didn’t seem to age none.  And whenever she happened to get onto Ronald Macdonald’s car, she noticed that he was awful polite and chivalrous to women.  He waited patiently when any two of ’em was decidin’ who was to pay the fare and findin’ their purses, and sayin’, ‘You must let me pay next time,’ and he would tickle a cryin’ baby under the chin and make it bill and coo like a bird.

“Did you ever see a baby bill?  I never did neither, but that’s what it said in the paper.  I suppose it has some reference to the expense of their comin’ and their keep through the whoopin’ cough stage and the measles, and so on.  There don’t neither of you know nothin’ about it ’cause you ain’t married, but when Roger come, his pa was obliged to mortgage the house, and the mortgage didn’t get took off until Roger was out of dresses and goin’ to school and beginnin’ to write with ink.

[Sidenote:  Fine Manners]

“Let me see—­what was I talkin’ about?  Oh, yes—­Ronald Macdonald’s fine manners.  When a woman give him five pennies instead of a nickel, he was always just as polite to her as he was to anybody, and would help her off the car and carry her bundles to the corner for her, and everything like that.  Of course Margaret couldn’t help noticin’ this and likin’ him for it though she was still mad at him for what he said about her age.

“One morning Margaret give him a quarter so’s he’d have to make change, and while he was doin’ it, she says to him, ’How nice it must be to ride all day without payin’ for it.’

“‘I’m under age,’ says Ronald Macdonald, with a smile that showed all his beautiful teeth and his ruby lips under his black waxed mustache.

“‘Get out,’ says Margaret, surprised.

“‘I am, though,’ says Ronald, confidentially.  ’I’m just nineteen.  How old are you?’

“‘Thirteen,’ says Margaret, softly.

“‘Don’t renig,’ says Ronald.  ‘I think we’re pretty near of an age.’

“When Margaret got home, she looked up ‘renig’ in the dictionary, but it wasn’t there.  She was too smart to ask Magdalene, but she kept on thinkin’.

[Sidenote:  Chance Acquaintances]

“One day, while she was goin’ down in the car, two men came in and sat by her.  They was chance acquaintances, it seemed, havin’ just met at the hotel.  ‘Your face is terrible familiar to me,’ one of the men said.  ’I’ve seen you before, or your picture, or something, somewhere.  Upon my soul, I believe your picture is hung up in my last wife’s boudoir.’

“‘Good God,’ says the other man, turnin’ as pale as death, ’did you marry Magdalene Mather, too?’

“‘I did,’ says the first man.

“‘Then, brother,’ says the second man, ’let us get off at the next corner and go and drown our mutual sorrow in drink.’

“After they got off, Margaret went out to Ronald, and she says to him:  ’There goes two of my aunt’s husbands.  She’s had three, and there’s two of ’em, right there.’