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A Duel or Two for Mr. Ditrichstein 19
but he won’t. What fun do you think it is for me to go around with a bald-headed man who’s always afraid of getting his head in a draft?
Mr. Leo dryly recited the “wig speech” from Calderon’s “The Judge of Zalamea,” wherein it is set forth that a man who suddenly grows hair advertises for admiration none but his wig-maker. And Mrs. Leo came down with:
“But Leo carries his physical honesty too far. He won’t even wear false teeth — not even on the stage. Where two of his teeth are missing shows every time he laughs.”
Mr. Leo laughed to prove it.
“I simply couldn’t wear artificial dentistry,” he solemnly declared.
“Why, when I thought he was going to die,” Mrs. Leo testified, “the last time we were abroad, and the surgeon wanted to cut out his appendix, Leo says : ‘No. If I’m going to die, I’m going to die whole!’
“But of course he didn’t die, and the bill was quite as large as if he’d had the operation. Leo has no sense of economy.”
And for a minute Mrs. Leo and I shamelessly speculated on what quality in him it is that won’t let him go to a dentist and have a couple of teeth restored. It couldn’t be this, it couldn’t be that
“And of course,” I said, “it couldn’t be a question of physical courage, since Mr. Ditrichstein once — so I have heard — fought a duel.”
“I’ve heard that, more or less vaguely, myself,” said Mrs. Leo, interested. “Did you ever fight a duel, Leo ?”
“My dear,” very quietly, “I fought twro.”
“I’ll bet some woman was involved.”
“Two women,” her husband corrected. “There is always a woman at the bottom of a duel.”