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“Oh, of course,” the Salesman continued more cheerfully, “a sudden croaking leaves any fellow’s affairs at pretty raw ends–lots of queer, bitter-tasting things that would probably have been all right enough if they’d only had time to get ripe. Lots of things, I haven’t a doubt, that would make my wife kind of mad, but nothing, I’m calculating, that she wouldn’t understand. There’d be no questions coming in from the office, I mean, and no fresh talk from the road that she ain’t got the information on hand to meet. Life insurance ain’t by any means, in my mind, the only kind of protection that a man owes his widow. Provide for her Future–if you can!–That’s my motto!–But a man’s just a plain bum who don’t provide for his own Past! She may have plenty of trouble in the years to come settling her own bills, but she ain’t going to have any worry settling any of mine. I tell you, there’ll be no ladies swelling round in crape at my funeral that my wife don’t know by their first names!”

With a sudden startling guffaw the Traveling Salesman’s mirth rang joyously out above the roar of the car.

“Tell me about your wife,” said the Youngish Girl a little wistfully.

Around the Traveling Salesman’s generous mouth the loud laugh flickered down to a schoolboy’s bashful grin.

“My wife?” he repeated. “Tell you about my wife? Why, there isn’t much to tell. She’s little. And young. And was a school-teacher. And I married her four years ago.”

“And were happy–ever–after,” mused the Youngish Girl teasingly.

“No!” contradicted the Traveling Salesman quite frankly. “No! We didn’t find out how to be happy at all until the last three years!”

Again his laughter rang out through the car.

“Heavens! Look at me!” he said at last. “And then think of her!–Little, young, a school-teacher, too, and taking poetry to read on the train same as you or I would take a newspaper! Gee! What would you expect?” Again his mouth began to twitch a little. “And I thought it was her fault–‘most all of the first year,” he confessed delightedly. “And then, all of a sudden,” he continued eagerly, “all of a sudden, one day, more mischievous-spiteful than anything else, I says to her, ‘We don’t seem to be getting on so very well, do we?’ And she shakes her head kind of slow. ‘No, we don’t!’ she says.–‘Maybe you think I don’t treat you quite right?’ I quizzed, just a bit mad.–‘No, you don’t! That is, not–exactly right,’ she says, and came burrowing her head in my shoulder as cozy as could be.–‘Maybe you could show me how to treat you–righter,’ I says, a little bit pleasanter.–‘I’m perfectly sure I could!’ she says, half laughing and half crying. ‘All you’ll have to do,’ she says, ‘is just to watch me!’–‘Just watch what you do?’ I said, bristling just a bit again.–‘No,’ she says, all pretty and soft-like; ‘all I want you to do is to watch what I don’t do!'”

With slightly nervous fingers the Traveling Salesman reached up and tugged at his necktie as though his collar were choking him suddenly.

“So that’s how I learned my table manners,” he grinned, “and that’s how I learned to quit cussing when I was mad round the house, and that’s how I learned–oh, a great many things–and that’s how I learned–” grinning broader and broader–“that’s how I learned not to come home and talk all the time about the ‘peach’ whom I saw on the train or the street. My wife, you see, she’s got a little scar on her face–it don’t show any, but she’s awful sensitive about it, and ‘Johnny,’ she says, ‘don’t you never notice that I don’t ever rush home and tell you about the wonderful slim fellow who sat next to me at the theater, or the simply elegant grammar that I heard at the lecture? I can recognize a slim fellow when I see him, Johnny,’ she says, ‘and I like nice grammar as well as the next one, but praising ’em to you, dear, don’t seem to me so awfully polite. Bragging about handsome women to a plain wife, Johnny,’ she says, ‘is just about as raw as bragging about rich men to a husband who’s broke.’