If there is any actual courtship at the present time, the girl does just as much of it as the man.  Her dainty remembrances at holiday time have little more meaning than the trifles a man bestows upon her, though the gift latitude accorded her is much wider in scope.

[Sidenote:  Furniture]

When a girl gives a man furniture, she usually intends to marry him, but often merely succeeds in making things interesting for the girl who does it in spite of her.  The newly-married woman attends to the personal belongings of her happy possessor with the celerity which is taught in classes for “First Aid to the Injured.”

One by one, the cherished souvenirs of his bachelor days disappear.  Pictures painted by rival fair ones go to adorn the servant’s room, through gradual retirement backward.  Rare china is mysteriously broken.  Sofa cushions never “harmonise with the tone of the room,” and the covers have to be changed.  It takes time, but usually by the first anniversary of a man’s marriage, his penates have been nobly weeded out, and the things he has left are of his wife’s choosing, generously purchased with his own money.

Woe to the girl who gives a man a scarf-pin!  When the bride returns the initial call, that scarf-pin adds conspicuously to her adornment.  The calm appropriation makes the giver grind her teeth—–­ and the bride knows it.

In the man’s presence, the keeper of his heart and conscience will say, sweetly:  “Oh, my dear, such a dreadful thing has happened!  That exquisitely embroidered scarf you made for Tom’s chiffonier is utterly ruined!  The colours ran the first time it was washed.  You have no idea how I feel about it—­it was such a beautiful thing!”

The wretched donor of the scarf attempts consolation by saying that it doesn’t matter.  It never was intended for Tom, but as every stitch in it was taken while he was with her, he insisted that he must have it as a souvenir of that happy summer.  She adds that it was carefully washed before it was given to him, that she has never known that kind of silk to fade, and that something must have been done to it to make the colours run.

[Sidenote:  A Pitched Battle]

The short-sighted man at this juncture felicitates himself because the two are getting on so well together.  He never realises that a pitched battle has occurred under his very nose, and that the honours are about even.

If Tom possesses a particularly unfortunate flash-light photograph of the girl, the bride joyfully frames it and puts it on the mantel where all may see.  If the original of the caricature remonstrates, the happy wife sweetly temporises and insists that it remain, because “Tom is so fond of it,” and says, “it looks just like her.”

Devious indeed are the paths of woman.  She far excels the “Heathen Chinee” in his famous specialty of “ways that are dark and tricks that are vain.”

Courtship is a game that a girl has to play without knowing the trump.  The only way she ever succeeds at it is by playing to an imaginary trump of her own, which may be either open, disarming friendliness, or simple indifference.