Is it conceivable that a man can have smoked as long as I have without
discovering that there is a complete system for the treatment of women
at the bottom of his cigar-case? Follow me carefully, and I will prove
it in two words. You choose a cigar, you try it, and it disappoints you.
What do you do upon that? You throw it away and try another. Now observe
the application! You choose a woman, you try her, and she breaks your
heart. Fool! take a lesson from your cigar-case. Throw her away, and try
another!"
I shook my head at that. Wonderfully clever, I dare say, but my
own experience was dead against it. "In the time of the late Mrs.
Betteredge," I said, "I felt pretty often inclined to try your
philosophy, Mr. Franklin. But the law insists on your smoking your
cigar, sir, when you have once chosen it." I pointed that observation
with a wink. Mr. Franklin burst out laughing--and we were as merry as
crickets, until the next new side of his character turned up in due
course. So things went on with my young master and me; and so (while the
Sergeant and the gardener were wrangling over the roses) we two spent
the interval before the news came back from Frizinghall.
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