"I think she is thoroughly competent to deal with the emergencies of a New York apartment-house. This morning just before I went out I heard her holding a heart-to-heart talk with the grocer. It seems that the eggs come in boxes done up in pink cotton and laid by patent hens that stamp their owner's name on each egg. For the privilege of eating these delicacies we pay the Paris price for eggs. Now it would also seem that these hens guarantee at that price to lay and deliver to the purchaser an unbroken, uncracked, wholly perfect egg in the first flush of its youth. But to-day the careless hens had delivered two cracked eggs out of one unhappy dozen to Mary. With a directness of address seldom met with in good society, Mary thus delivered herself down the dumb-waiter, 'Well, damn you for a groceryman--'" "Oh, Aubrey! Did she say that word?" "She said just that. 'When we are paying a dollar a look at eggs, what do you mean by sending me two cracked ones out of twelve? To be sure _somebody_ has been sitting on these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon, and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd give five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old woman's face, for she talks for all the world just like my own mother.' And with that he exchanged the two cracked eggs for two perfect ones out of another order, and took the good ones in to Mary." "I wonder if it will last," I said to a woman who was envying the fact that I could persuade Aubrey to go out with me whenever I wanted him to. "It _won't_ last!" she declared, cheerfully. "And it won't last that Mr. Jardine will go calling with you evenings. The clubs will claim him within six months, and as for Mary--I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll wager you a ten-pound box of candy that within a year you will have lost both your husband and your cook." "Lost my husband," I cried, my face stiffening. "Oh, I only mean as we all lose our husbands," she explained, airily. "I used to have Jack, but I am married now to golf links and the club." "I'll take your bet," I said. "You'll lose," she laughed. "They are both too perfect to last." "They are not!" I cried. But when the door closed, I rapped on wood. CHAPTER II THEORIES If there is anything more delightful than to furnish one's first home, I have yet to discover it. Aubrey says that "moving in goes it one better," but his preference is based on the solid satisfaction he takes in putting in two shelves where one grew before and in providing towel-racks and closet-hooks wherever there is an inviting wall-space for them. But to me, even the list I made out and changed and figured on and priced before I made a single purchase was full of possibilities, and contained wild flutters of excitement on account of certain innovations I wished to try.