Later she re-enters, beaming,
with the street and number pat. But by that time she has forgotten
the anecdote."
"Well, tell us about your old lady, and what it was you said to
her," spoke impatiently the Girton Girl, who is always eager when
the subject under discussion happens to be the imbecility or
criminal tendency of the opposite sex.
"I was at the age," continued the Woman of the World, "when a young
girl tiring of fairy stories puts down the book and looks round her
at the world, and naturally feels indignant at what she notices. I
was very severe upon both the shortcomings and the overgoings of
man--our natural enemy. My old friend used to laugh, and that made
me think her callous and foolish. One day our bonne--like all
servants, a lover of gossip--came to us delighted with a story which
proved to me how just had been my estimate of the male animal. The
grocer at the corner of our rue, married only four years to a
charming and devoted little wife, had run away and left her.
"'He never gave her even a hint, the pretty angel!' so Jeanne
informed us. 'Had had his box containing his clothes and everything
he wanted ready packed for a week, waiting for him at the railway
station--just told her he was going to play a game of dominoes, and
that she was not to sit up for him; kissed her and the child good-
night, and--well, that was the last she ever saw of him.
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