I depend a great deal upon other men's opinion of a man. I never thoroughly trust a man who is not a favorite with his own sex. I wish men were as generous to us in that respect, for a woman whom other women do not like is just as dangerous. And I never knew simple jealousy--the reason men urge against accepting our verdict--to be universal enough to condemn a woman. There always are a few fair-minded women in every community--just enough to be in the minority--to break continuous jealousy. Be that as it may, the man I am talking about has kept up his acquaintance with Rachel and Alice Asbury and me in a desultory way, and occasionally he grows confidential. The last time I saw him he said: "Sometimes I wish I were a woman, Ruth, when I get into so much trouble with the girls. Women never seem to have any worry over love affairs. All they have to do is to lean back and let men wait on them until they see one that suits them. It is like ordering from a _menu_ card for them to select husbands. You run over a list for a girl--oysters, clams, or terrapin--and she takes terrapin. In the other case she runs over her own list--Smith, Jones, or Robinson--and likewise takes the rarest. But she is not at all troubled about it. Marrying is so easy for a girl. It comes natural to her." Tabby, I did wish that he knew as much of the internal mechanism of the engagements that you and I have participated in, by proxy, as we do--if he would understand, profit by, and speedily forget the knowledge. But, like the hypocrite I am, I only smiled indulgently at him, as if, for women, marrying was mere reposing on eider-down cushions, with the tiller ropes in their hands, while men did the rowing. I was not going to admit, Tabby, that the most of the girls we know never worked harder in their lives than during that indefinite and mysterious period known as "making up their minds." You see I uphold my own sex at all hazards--to men. He was standing up to go when he said that, but there was something about him which led me to suspect that he was in a condition when he needed some woman to straighten out his affairs. I made no reply, which threw the burden of continuing the conversation upon him. I was in that passive state which made me perfectly willing to have him say good-night and go home or stay and confess to me, just as he chose. I knew he needed me; a good many men need their mothers once in a while as much as they ever did when boys. There was something whimsically boyish about Charlie as he leaned over the back of a tall chair and debated secretly whether or not he should confide in me. "Why don't you ask me why I said that?" he said. "Because I know without asking. You were induced to say it by what you have been thinking of all the evening. It sounded like a beginning, but really it was an ending."