This did irritate me, and I sarcastically remarked: "I am glad your sense of humor is so keen. I suppose I am dull, but a broken piston-rod does not strike me as 'humorous." Her eyes filled with tears, as they always do when my ill temper takes the form of sarcasm, and I felt like the brute I am. So I hurriedly added: "It's all right, honey, what were you going to say?" "I was only going to say," said she, with a gulp, and tactfully changing the form of her remark, "that it seems strange that we should hear no sound when we are standing still and the engine running if the trouble is a piston-rod." I pondered this for a moment and then said: "Well, let's see if that is so." I started the engine and it ran as sweetly as one could wish, but as soon as the car began to move--bump, bump, bump was heard louder than ever. At that moment an urchin, who had been doing some investigating on his own hook, called out: "Your tire's flat!" The announcement was as reassuring and as humiliating as to have the doctor say, when you were convinced you had appendicitis, "What the deuce have you been eating?" This tiny layman had diagnosed correctly a case which the learned of the faculty had failed to understand! He promptly received his fee and scampered off with his companions to spend it before Ruth and I had reached the back of the car and were gazing at a long nail protruding from the tire of one of the rear wheels. I had never changed a rim before, but I remembered the agent had told me that it took three minutes. It did--and twenty-seven more--but what was that compared with a week's waiting to have a broken piston-rod replaced? When we were again under way, I said: "We were talking this morning about the guarantee on tires, and I ought to have explained that the guarantee, of course, refers only to the bursting of a tire and not to an accident like this." Why is it we men cannot make up our minds to tell the truth to the wives of our bosoms? I have not in mind now our wickedness but our folly. Ruth knew as well as I did that this great truth had not dawned on my clouded brain until the rusty nail had punctured the tire and my ignorance at the same time! Of course she expressed her gratification at this bit of valuable information. What would women do with their spare time if they did not have to waste so much of it in "saving the faces" of their lords! XX FALSTAFF