_David._ "Quite the other way, ma'am. I'd never no peace at all till she went. I prayed to the Lord night and day for thirty years that He would please to part us; but I left it to Him which way it should be. I was quite ready to go myself; but He took her at last, and right thankful I was indeed." _Miss A._ "I suppose you were always quarrelling?" _David._ "I had a hot temper enough before I was married; but when I see what an awful woman she was, I says to myself, 'Now, two fires cannot burn together;' and I grew as quiet as could be, and never contraried her no ways. But she was a most awful woman; indeed, she did throw a coffee-pot just off the fire at my head one day." _Miss A._ "I hope she repented before she died." _David._ "Indeed, I don't know. I did often say to her when she lay a-dying, 'My dear, I hope the Lord will forgive your sins; but I do not know as He will, for you have been a most awful woman indeed, my dear." They ring very true, these grumbles, do they not? And they all add to the wish which so many reflective persons must have entertained at one time or other, that the Perfect Man had not narrowed His earthly experiences and diminished the variety of His example by remaining single. CHAPTER XIV IN WHICH A JOVIAL PARTY JOIN ENGLAND'S ANNUAL SATURNALIA AND A NEW KNIGHT PHILOSOPHIZES ON HIS GREATNESS Naomi's young friend Dollie Heathcote, who goes everywhere and does all the doggy things, as he calls them, was so shocked to find that I had never been to the Derby that, in order to save his reason, which seemed to be tottering under the blow, I said we would accompany him there, on condition that he took care of us. "Very well, then," he said. "I'll make up a jolly party. Wow, wow!" For some time past he has been including this insane exclamation in most of his remarks. From what I can understand, the intention is to signify that the speaker is capable of all--ready for any emergency, and particularly a convivial one. "We go, I suppose, in a hearse," I said, when he came to announce that all the plans were settled. "Great Heavens, no," replied Dollie. "That's all over. We go in a motor brake, and my friend Farrar's got a box for us in the Grand Stand." "All right," I said. "But I always understood that one should go to the Derby in a hearse, wearing a green puggeree. You see, I was out of England so long, I don't really know." "I hope you'll be able to bear up without your green puggeree next Wednesday," said Dollie, with real anxiety. These young men, for all their "wow-wows," are very scrupulous dressers and anxious company-keepers nowadays, I notice. "I'll try," I said. "But, look here," he added, "I don't want to bore you, you know, but I hope that when we're there you're all going to bet. You haven't any rotten objections, have you?" I said that I knew of none. For my own part I would cheerfully put something on.