But they don’t last long he looks serious again and says, “It may be some other woman could give me a little advice just now.” I says, “She can if she’s the right woman.” But still he’s kind of hesitating to take the plunge so I give him another push. “Is it some mystery of the female soul you can’t make out?” “It is just that,” he says; and I asks, “She can’t make up her mind that she loves you?” He laughs and says, “No, it ain’t anything like that, you been reading novels. I am a married man and got three children growing up,” he says. “Ah, me!” says I. “You should hear some of the stories about married gentlemen!” I looks at him again and see he’s what they call a go-getter. First I think maybe he’s the secretary of the Hardware Dealers’ Association that’s in town but then I guess he’s a lawyer come to lobby here in our national capital. So I rubs away at his nails and says, “Is it the wife?” He thinks for a minute and then all of a sudden it busts out, “My God!” And then he waits again and says kind of solemn-like, “Tell me this do all women have to go crazy?” I make a guess at his age and I says, “How old is your wife--if you know?” “She’s forty-two,” says he. “Oh, yes,” says I; and then, “She can’t make up her mind what she wants, and she can’t sit still in one room--” “Good God,” says he, “it is worse than that, she is got the angina pectoris.” “Oh, poor soul!” I says. I hadn’t never heard of it but it sounded serious. “But it’s different from any sort of angina pectoris you ever heard of,” he goes on. “It’s a travelling angina pectoris. One week it’s in the shoulders and the next week it’s gone to the stomach and the week after that it’s in the knee.” “I suppose you’ve took her to the doctors?” says I. “Doctors?” says he. “I’ve worn out four sets of tires taking her to doctors. The ordinary doctors won’t do at all it has got to be a specialist of the knee, or the stomach or what you will. And he tells her there ain’t anything there but then she thinks maybe he didn’t look careful enough or maybe I called him on the phone and told him to spare her nervous system so she has to go to another one without telling me--but he always tells me with a bill!” He says it without any smile and he sits there in the bottomest pit of the dumps so I says, “I suppose you know what is the matter with the poor soul at her time.” “They tell me it’s the change of life,” he says; and I says; “Some ladies in my profession have got a different name they call it the change of wife.” Then again I feels the start in his fingers and I know he’s looking at my head bowed over his nails. “Is that an old gag,” says he, “or do you make them?” “You just seen it come out of the mint?” says I. “Well,” says he, “I’m sorry I don’t own a gold-mine.”