“Been getting ready your new gown, have you?” said the girl with the classic profile. “I only wish I had mine off my mind.” “It wasn’t my new gown,” said the president. “It was Tom. He has had a heavy cold, and the house smells so strong of camphor that there will not be a moth within a block of it this year. I don’t mind being bidden a tragic farewell at mid-day, but I do mind being waked up at midnight for that purpose.” “But it was nothing serious, was it?” asked the brown-eyed blonde. “I thought the other day, when he came to the top of the stairs and called to you that he was dying, that a man who was breathing his last would manage to do it with less noise.” “Oh, pshaw!” said the president. “That was nothing to the time he waked me up at one o’clock in the morning to tell me that he was dying, but if I let that mug-faced young preacher who used to come to see me, officiate at his funeral he would come back and haunt me. It took a hot-water bottle, a mustard plaster, two hot toddies, and the camphor to quiet him that time.” “Humph!” said the girl with the dimple in her chin; “I wonder why a man always thinks a cold or a boil fatal—when he has it?” “Perhaps he doesn’t himself,” said the girl with the Roman nose; “but he always wants the women of the family to act as if they did.” “Very true,” said the girl with the eyeglasses; “but do you know what Dolly does? As soon as her husband complains of being ill she begins to weep and tear her hair and lament that he will die, she knows he will. That frightens him, and when she insists upon putting him to bed, and giving him a bowl of hot ginger tea (which he detests), he pretends that he was only joking, and flees to the office, when she calls him up every half-hour to ask how he is. She says he seldom complains of his health nowadays.” “You know my sister Amelia, don’t you?” said the girl with the classic profile. “Well, her husband had a heavy cold last week. He waked her up at two o’clock to tell her that he was dying, and that he knew he had not been a good husband to her, and could not go without her forgiveness. She wept, and said that he had not been very nice to her, and had never given her half enough money. Upon this, the dying man sat up, and began to argue the case. From argument they passed to something warmer. He went down to the office next day, and hasn’t said a word about dying since.” “I wouldn’t mind Tom thinking he was dying once in awhile,” said the president, “if he’d only allow me the same privilege occasionally. He won’t, though; he comes in and says, cheerfully, ‘Oh, you’ll soon be all right. You should have seen how much worse I was once when I had it, and never missed a day at the office, either!’ The last time he did that my throat was too sore for me to reply properly, and I really thought I should die of rage.”