Mr. Fannet and the Afterglow

I

MR. FANNET, like nearly all the other retired gentlemen of Washburn, sat on his front porch enjoying the late afternoon. A little while before that, he had enjoyed the early afternoon, and a little before that, he had enjoyed the morning. So pleasant was the life of the retired in Washburn. Mrs. Fannet sat near him, busy sewing; for in Washburn only death or invalidism brought retirement to women. So, while her husband rocked and lot his mind loiter, she urged her needle rapidly.

Mrs. Cora Jessup sat on the porchrailing, with her back to the street. There was a porch-chair empty, but she said she always did like to sit on a railing if it was not too high. She braced herself with a hand on each side, tilting forward a little and straightening her shoulders with a pretty youthful curving of her back, which she enjoyed. She crossed her knees and swung her foot in its buckled pump, and seemed ready for something pleasant and amusing to happen. Her dress combined freshness and limpness with a high degree of thinness. One could always tell by a mere glance at Mrs. Jessup that she had every intention of looking nice. She had been heard to say solemnly, ‘I mourn my husband by wearing the kind of clothes he liked to see me in.’ And no doubt she did. She was now looking at Mr. Fannet, since no younger man was about, with a gaze which invited him to make himself pleasing — nay more, which seemed to hold faith in his ability to be pleasing.

Mr. Fannet drew a labored breath as he stirred himself in his chair. ‘The grip settled in my back this year,’ he explained as he let himself cautiously sink again into an easy position, ‘and it looks as if it would hang on all summer. It’ll be carrying me off one of these days,’ he added rather cheerfully.

‘Nonsense,’ said Cora Jessup gayly, ‘you know I’m looking forward to the time when you’ll be needing a second wife.’

She glanced at Mrs. Fannet, but she was carefully mitering a corner of her trimming and did not look up.

‘Well,’ said old Mr. Fannet, ‘that ’ll be something to live for. I’ll try to stave off grip a while longer if there’s a chance like that around.’

Mrs. Fannet did look up here, not in disapproval but in mild interest in her husband’s unaccustomed vivacity. Then she smiled genially at Mrs. Jessup, a smile of common feminine understanding, and returned her attention to her sewing.

Mrs. Jessup acknowledged her notice with ‘But you need n’t think I’d take as good care of you as Mrs. Fannet does. You’d have to get over your lame back — so as to be able to pick up my handkerchief for me,’ she added, as she jauntily stooped to recover it herself. ‘That’s what I need a man for chiefly,’ she explained laughingly to Mrs. Fannet. ‘I’m always dropping things. My fingers are all butter.’

‘Which of the Allison girls is that?’ asked Mrs. Fannet, glancing through the vines as she lifted her pleasant gaze. She was not trying to change the subject. She really wished to identify the young lady, and Mrs. Jessup knew the personnel of the town thoroughly.

‘That’s Hope,’ she said, glancing over her shoulder; and went on to explain the Allison girls and their works.

‘ I used to know a girl named Hope,’ said Mr. Fannet, knocking again at the door of the conversation.

‘A-ha!’ cried Mrs. Jessup archly.

Mr. Fannet donned a reminiscent smile. ‘She was a pretty girl,’ he said.

‘Did she hope?’

‘Well—’ Mr. Fannet halted for something appropriate and creditable. He put on as demure a look as his candid features would compass, but was obliged to end lamely with ‘That was before I began to notice mother.’

‘Was that Hope Masters?’ asked Mrs. Fannet in a matter-of-fact way.

She did not remind him how remote his relation to that young lady had been.

‘I’ll venture you broke your full share of hearts, Mr. Fannet, hopes and fears and all,’ said Mrs. Jessup invitingly.

But while Mr. Fannet began to prepare a roguish look, her flitting glances caught Mr. John Saunders approaching the corner with solid step, on his way home to supper.

‘Oh, there’s Mr. Saunders,’ she exclaimed, hastily leaving her perch. ‘I’ve been wanting to ask him something for ever so long. Good-bye. You must tell me some more of your loveaffairs some time, Mr. Fannet.’ She fluttered her skirts buoyantly across the lawn, crying, ‘O Mr. Saunders!’ and was gone.

Mr. Fannet turned a cautious eye upon his wife, but she was calmly gathering up her sewing things and putting them together with a business-like hand.

‘If Cora Jessup had n’t gone off so suddenly I’d have had her stay to supper,’ she said. ‘I always hate to see people go off to eat alone like that.’

But she went away to ‘see to supper’ and left her husband sitting on the porch. The recent sprightly dialogue had left a pleasant residuum in his mind, and he exchanged cheerful greetings with passers-by or even waved a jaunty hand at acquaintances taking the other side of the street.

‘That’s the kind of old age I’d like to look forward to,’ said Howard Sly to his wife as they passed. ‘All his work done, his mind made up on all subjects, children grown up and behaving themselves, interest coming in semi-annually — nothing to worry about but the tariff question.’

‘He certainly is a nice old man,’ answered Mrs. Sly.

‘Yes, the tariff question alone never ruined any one’s disposition,’ said her husband.

When presently Mrs. Fannet called her husband to the table, he entered with a sort of lilt in his step and a compliment ready for her wares. So pleasant was his mood evidently that Mrs. Fannet thought it a good moment to allow a topic on which she was cautiously taking his mind to rise to the surface. When he said, ‘Where’s David?’ noting the absence of that young man, the last child under the family roof, she answered directly, ‘He had to drive over to Spencer this afternoon, so he took Wilma Henderson along, and they’ll take supper over there.’

‘Humph!’ said Mr. Fannet, geniality fading a little in his manner.

‘Yes,’ said his wife serenely, ‘it’ll be a nice evening. They’ll enjoy it.’

‘Humph!’ said her husband again, with even less cordiality.

And she knew that her experiment had indicated that she might as well drop it for the moment. Arguing with Mr. Fannet had never proved very profitable. So good a manager had Mrs. Fannet been, however, that his notions had rarely interfered with family economics or relations. Many times had she smiled acquiescence in his side of an argument when she was indifferent to the whole matter. And many other times had she quietly committed the household on a practical point before she allowed it to come into the open at all.

If she had foreseen that any difficulty could arise in relation to David’s loveaffair, she would have tried to forestall it. But she did not dream that James could find objection to any one so entirely attractive and desirable as Wilma Henderson. Yet somehow, somewhere, he had begun to question his complete approval of her, and his wife was moving carefully in the fear of turning his doubt into stubborn prejudice. Mr. Fannet set his opinions to rise much as she did her bread. But while her bread always rose, his opinions, if carefully neglected, sometimes came to naught and faded out. She was hoping still that his opposition to Wilma might wither and die if it did not get too much and too respectful attention. So now, like an experienced wife, she went on as if David’s loves were a trifling thing and he might have a new one to-morrow, and led conversation into pleasant by-paths of ordinary affairs.

Mr. Fannet’s silvered mood returned to him later in the evening, however, and he sat on the porch again and watched the insects form a nebulous mist about the arc-light on the corner.

‘It’s a fine night,’ he said.

‘Fine,’ said Mrs. Fannet.

‘David’ll be having a nice time coming home,’ he surmised enviously.

‘I expect he’ll go around by Warner’s ridge. That’s the nicest road.’

‘Yes, and not too short. Well, I used to take the longest road myself,’ he added with a pleasant sigh. He could hardly be aware that every old gentleman since roads began had made the same remark. After a moment he went on, ‘I can’t remember that we had many rides, Emmeline.’

‘Not by ourselves. We used to go on hay rides and bob-sled rides. ’

‘That would n’t be the same,’ said Mr. Fannet, with a shade of discontent.

His wife smiled and said, ‘We made it do very well.’

‘Yes; oh, yes,’ answered Mr. Fannet grudgingly.

II

Mrs. Jessup stopped at the porch again the next day, to give Mrs. Fannet some neighborhood news, Mrs. Fannet having a good wholesome interest in her neighbors’ reaction to life. Mr. Fannet distinctly brightened up at her entrance and took a tentative position on the outskirts of the talk as if waiting for notice. Mrs. Jessup seemed to be more interested in her gossip and Mrs. Fannet’s opinion of it than in anything else at the moment, but before she left she was able to give Mr. Fannet her full attention.

‘I’ve often wondered about your name, Mr. Fannet,’ she said. Mrs. Jessup could always discover quickly, and pick up lightly, a personal thread of conversation. ’It’s so unusual; where does it come from?’

‘It’s French,’ answered Mr. Fannet promptly.

Mrs. Fannet looked surprised. The family history was not known further back than the Fannet grandfather, who had lived in eastern Pennsylvania.

‘Oh—so that’s where you get it,’ returned Mrs. Jessup with arch suggestiveness. ‘ I ’ve heard about Frenchmen! ’

Mr. Fannet drew on his resources to meet the demands of the moment. ‘They’re not so bad as they’re painted,’ he said, hopefully inviting every one to believe the worst.

‘Oh, they’re pretty dangerous. It’s a good thing you found Mrs. Fannet early. What if you’d been left at large all these years!’

Mr. Fannet bridled and looked responsive. The facile widow had offered food like this to so many men in her day that the phrases ran lightly off her tongue. To be fair, if Mr. Fannet had been a younger man and if his wife had not been present, her methods would have been more modest, perhaps also more subtle. She went on the belief that no man was ever too old or too much married to need a little mild philandering. Certainly conversation always became a little livelier wherever her path led, and many a man went home more agreeable because so pleased with his showing in her hands.

The only trouble was that a man sometimes issued from her treatment with an appetite for its continuance, even w hen the circumstances of his life did not furnish means for that. Mrs. Fannet began to notice, after her husband had had two or three more dialogues with Mrs. Jessup, that he wished to carry over the tone of these sprightly conversations into other intercourse. She herself had laid aside coquetry many years ago, and she merely smiled pleasantly at his compliments and jocularity and did nothing to stimulate them.

Something was coming to life in Mr. Fannet. He seemed to be taking a survey of his years and saying to himself that a thing had been omitted which should still be supplied if possible. If gallantry and a responding admiration from ladies were still to be achieved, the effort was worth while. So Mrs. Fannet found a new element entering the calm neighborliness with which her husband had enveloped the women of their acquaintance. He became very active when callers dropped in, in the matter of chairs and fans and icewater or lemonade, and his attentions were offered with a jauntiness and provocativeness which even his earlier manner had not known.

However, this new behavior of his was quite harmless, and his wife turned an undisturbed though amused eye upon it. Many people, she reasoned, some time late in life discover an omission which they now long to supply. As days went on, however, other manifestations of his romantic mood became more annoying. One was his increasing grudge at David’s love-affair. Wilma was no less pretty and wellbehaved and high-spirited than ever, but the once plastic material of Mr. Fannet’s opinion of her was hardening into a stiff prejudice. Merely keeping the subject out of sight was useless. He made grudging surmises as to David’s whereabouts and actions. He even displayed his feeling to David once or twice, and it took all Mrs. Fannet’s resources of restraining glances and interceptory remarks to keep the situation from becoming definitely unpleasant.

As time progressed Mr. Fannet reached another stage of his new development. Mrs. Fannet came into the sitting-room one day to hear her sixteen-year-old, ultra-romantic granddaughter asking with great interest, ‘And why did n’t you marry her, grandpa, a nice girl like that?’

‘Oh,’ said Mr. Fannet darkly, after a pause, ‘she was a Roman Catholic. It would n’t do.’

Celia’s expression said that to her mind that was an inconsequent and certainly inappropriate barrier to romance. But at her grandmother’s entrance the subject dropped. Mrs. Fannet wondered seriously who the rejected maiden was, and finally recalled one who might fit the part, though she could not remember that James had ever had close relations with her.

That same evening, when she told some incident introducing the name of an early friend of her own, Mr. Fannet picked up the name and dwelt on it a little, regretfully. 1 She was a fine girl,’ he concluded, with a little sigh, as if she had deserved from fate more than he had been able to give her.

And Mrs. Fannet, knowing that Mary Mason had been in love with Fergus Henson from her high-school days on, was rather irritated for her.

She presently noticed that his sentimental reminiscences were most frequent and spirited when he had been taking observations of David. Sitting on the porch they would see David pass with Wilma in the car; or David, freshly dressed, would dash down the stairs and out across the porch, rushing to an appointment; or David would be heard at the telephone, urging an engagement on Wilma, with mingled persiflage and entreaty. And presently Mr. Fannet would show signs that his mind was reconstructing, not to say constructing, corresponding scenes of his youth. The next best thing to gamboling is the recollection of past gamboling. He withdrew envious eyes from David and mentioned earlier years. His wife frequently heard fragments and endings of conversations which indicated that some one was receiving interpretations of other days. He undoubtedly thought that he was telling the truth, — at least James had always been most truthful, — but her memory did not corroborate his statements or hints.

Celia, however, needed no evidence to stimulate her credulity, and her grandmother found her more than once encouraging her grandfather’s recital with her vigorous responsiveness.

‘And were n’t you sorry when she went away?’ Mrs. Fannet from the dining-room heard her saying one morning. ‘That was awfully exciting. How old was she?’ Celia seemed to be measuring her own possibilities.

‘Oh — about eighteen.’

‘Did you know grandma then ?'

‘Not very well. I just knew her.’

‘Oh,’ Celia’s voice fell. She was evidently beginning to regard her grandmother as a barrier to romance. ‘ And did n’t you ever see Amy again?’

‘Yes, a long while afterward, after I was married.’

‘Was she married?’ Celia’s tone held hope of a life-long grief.

Mr. Fannet considered. ‘Yes, just before that.’

‘Oh,’ said Celia again, divided as to possibilities.

‘Celia,’ called her grandmother, ‘will you run over to Mrs. Brown’s on a little errand for me?’

The conversation broken, she meditated on Amy. There was an Amy — Amy what was it? She visited at the Mellens one summer and John Mellon took her around all the time. James could not have had much to do with her. Mrs. Fannet pursed her lips a little, thoughtfully.

It was only a day or two after that that she heard Mrs. Jessup on the porch with James. She herself, inside the window, was busy ‘cutting off ’ an intricate pattern from an old appliqué quilt which Celia’s mother, in the new zeal for quilt-making, had fancied, and went on to finish her task.

‘But you’re not old, Mr. Fannet,’ Cora Jessup was protesting gayly.

‘I’m getting along,’ Mr. Fannet insisted. ‘We all have to. But I’ve had my day,’ he added complacently.

’I’ll venture you did, a gay day. Don’t you have any regrets now for all those hearts you broke — now that you have reformed?’

Mr. Fannet ran his hand over the bald top of his head and smoothed down his short gray beard and implied that he was still incorrigible.

‘Which was the nicest of them— besides Mrs. Fannet?’

‘That would be telling. I used to see lots of pretty girls in the days before mother got me.’

Got me! Mrs. Fannet, though no feminist, snipped her scissors staccato-wise.

‘And she was pretty lucky too.’

The retort to that was obvious, but Mr. Fannet chose the converse. ‘Women have to take what they can get, of course,’ he said modestly.

‘Yes, of course,’ said the widow, regretfully. ‘Don’t you think women should have a right to propose as well as men?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mr. Fannet. ‘Men would n’t like to be proposed to all the time.’

Even Mrs. Jessup had to laugh. ‘Oh, not all the time, of course. They could have office-hours, perhaps, or King’s-excused. But honestly,’ she returned to the attack, ‘have n’t you known sometimes when a girl just wanted to propose the worst way?’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Mr. Fannet modestly. ‘There was one girl—’He paused thoughtfully.

‘Ah, I thought so!’ cried Mrs. Jessup triumphantly. ‘A man like you!’

Mrs. Fannet dropped her scissors — flung them a little, to be accurate — and moved to the doorway.

‘Oh, how do you do?’ said Mrs. Jessup, quite without embarrassment. ‘Mr. Fannet and I have been having a grand time. He was just going to tell me a romance. I don’t suppose he wants you to hear it.’

‘Those things stopped after mother got hold of me,’ said Mr. Fannet, smug but also unembarrassed.

‘Do you want to see an old quilt I’ve got out?’ said Mrs. Fannet, ‘It belonged to my grandmother.’

‘Oh, yes,’ cried Mrs. Jessup, following her into the house and leaving the dissatisfied Mr. Fannet with his tale on his hands. ‘ I just love old quilts. If I did n’t hate to sit still so, I’d be making me one. Oh, is n’t that the loveliest old thing?’ Vivacity sprang eternal in Mrs. Jessup.

Mrs. Fannet felt no irritation at Mrs. Jessup, — everybody knew Cora Jessup, — but she was annoyed at James. She almost thought that she ought to do somet hing about this. When, in the evening, he flung out some sharp remarks about David and Wilma, who had just strolled by in the moonlight while he sat still on the porch, she was so provoked that she said nothing at all. But she thought upon James and this late blooming.

III

The next day something very pleasant happened, to break into her perplexity. Callie Blakeley came to spend the day. Callie Blakeley was Mrs. Richard Blakeley, once Callie or Clara Thornburn, who came in from the West every year or two to visit contemporaries, and, as one said, to laugh in every house in Washburn. She and Mrs. Fannet had been seat-mates in school and had remained friends. Their visits were conducted with a deal of sprightly reminiscence, that found new stones to turn over at each recurring session, while Mrs. Blakeley’s deep laugh accompanied each turning.

This proved to be an especially rich sitting, since the interval of separation had been unusually long; but in the middle of the afternoon Mrs. Blakeley was still in full gale. Celia had come over and was perched open-eared about the conversation, finding it even fuller of suggestion than her grandfather’s pleasing tales.

‘And is he living yet?’ Mrs. Blakeley would say. ‘Mercy Ann! Well, he always was hard to stop. Do you remember — ’ something on which Celia hung absorbed.

Finally she reached matters even more pleasing. ‘Do you keep track of all your old beaux, Emmeline?’ she asked. ‘Some of them must live around here.’

‘That would n’t be hard to do,’ said Mrs. Fannet easily.

‘Don’t you believe her, my dear,’ said Mrs. Blakeley to Celia.

‘Did grandma have beaux — besides grandpa?’

‘Did she? — she did. She just took grandpa to get rid of the rest of them. Would you like to hear about them, my dear?’

She cocked one eye at Mr. Fannet over Celia’s head, but found no response in him.

‘Oh, yes!’cried Celia, all agog; ‘I’ve heard about grandpa’s, but grandma never tells anything.’

‘Your grandpa did n’t have any, child. He spent all his time waiting around for your grandma to get ready to notice him. She’s a close-mouthed thing, my dear. It always was hard to get anything out of her. I don’t know about them all myself but I’ll tell you what I can.’

‘Callie Thornburn!’ Mrs. Fannet interrupted; ‘don’t talk such nonsense to the child.’

‘Pooh! How old are you, Celia?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘A girl of sixteen is quite old enough to know all about her grandmother if her grandmother has behaved herself. Why, when she was sixteen — Emmy, where’s your joy-box?’

‘What’s a joy-box?’ asked Celia.

‘ Oh, you snip a little piece off each of your joys and put it in; only you quit when you get married — the last thing you put in is a piece of your weddingdress and one of your roses.’

‘Oh, yes—like, a memory-book. We girls all have them.’

4 Well, keep them until you ’re grandmothers and you’ll get more fun out of them than you do now. Where is yours, Emmy?’

‘Oh, the children got all the souvenirs and keepsakes and things out to play with, long ago. There’s nothing now but some old pictures and such things. It’s in the attic.’

‘Celia, run up and find it, honey. I’m crazy to see those old things.’

Mrs. Fannet laughed protestingly, then suddenly acquiesced, as she took in her husband’s aspect with a sideglance, and told Celia just where to find it. Celia came back promptly with the storied box, which Mrs. Blakeley fell on with a sort of joyful crow.

‘It’s the same old box,’ she cried, viewing its marbled sides with delight. ‘We went down to Judson’s store and got them to give them to us just alike. Mine’s a good deal battereder than yours, though. It’s been looked into oftener. Let’s have an eye on the remains.’

She opened the box and Mrs. Fannet and Celia drew nearer, Celia leaning eagerly over her knee. Mr. Fannet dwelt apart.

‘Oh, who’s that?’ cried Celia, as a faded old picture came to view. ‘ Is n’t he funny-looking!’ she added in disappointment, looking at the long hair and the flowing coat. Celia’s taste in youths was up to date.

‘Funny-looking! That’s all you youngsters know. He was my own cousin and the handsomest fellow anywhere around, and he lived in your grandmother’s lap for about a year.’

‘In her lap!’

‘At her feet or her apronstrings or anyway you like, then. He was there.’

‘And what became of him?’

‘Oh, he went into the discard,’ said his elderly cousin flippantly. She had found the language of her own grandchildren not inexpressive.

Celia raised awed eyes to her grandmother, who had refused a man. She herself hoped some day to accept a man, but how much greater to refuse one!

Mrs. Blakeley kept on turning over the pictures, with brisk remarks upon them, w hile she and Mrs. Fannet laughingly supplemented each other’s recollections. Celia unearthed from the bottom of the box a cabinet photograph of a most debonair youth, gloves and cane in one hand.

‘Oh, there’s Howard Means!’ cried Mrs. Blakeley. ‘Was n’t he a dandy? Emmy, you were engaged to him!’

‘Just one day,’ said Mrs. Fannet, tilting her head back to see the picture through the low er part of her glasses.

‘O grandma!’ cried Celia, interest compelling her, ‘did he — kiss you?’

Mrs. Blakeley laughed until the box shook far down on her precipitous lap. Mrs. Fannet laughed too, but turned rosy red under her gray hair. Mr. Fannet hooked his thumbs into his armholes and looked off into the treetops. Celia’s question went unanswered.

‘Here’s Beth Lindsay,’ said Mrs. Blakeley, picking up the next picture. ‘Was n’t she a pretty girl ? And Anne Johnston — I saw her last year. She lives in Cleveland and has a big family. And here’s — ’

She stopped on the name and eyed the picture seriously. Mrs. Fannet looked at it also without speaking.

Celia looked from one pair of glasses to the other.

‘Was grandma engaged to this one, too?’ she asked at a venture.

‘No, dear,’ said her grandmother gently.

‘It’s surprising what good horsesense you had, Emmy,’ said Mrs. Blakeley. ‘Everybody thought you were utterly foolish then, but you knew more than any of them. It was too bad.’

She took another look at the picture before she laid it down. But they explained nothing to Celia. Mr. Fannet hitched in his chair and cast an inquiring side-glance at them.

Mrs. Jessup came springily along the sidewalk, under a rosy parasol. Mr. Fannet brightened at sight of her and lifted a hopeful hand, and she came across the grass to join them.

‘There’s always a bunch of ladies where Mr. Fannet is,’ she said gayly. But she immediately moved along the veranda to where the centre of interest seemed to lie. ‘What cunning old pictures!’ she said. ‘Are n’t they perfectly quaint? I just love these old things. Is n’t that a good-looking man? Was he an old admirer of yours, Mrs. Fannet ?’

‘They all were,’ said Celia reverently. ‘She refused ever so many of them.’

Mrs. Fannet laughed almost as hard as Mrs. Blakeley and made a trifling denial.

‘I never heard of such a flirtatious family,’ cried Mrs. Jessup with great pleasure. ‘ Here’s Mr. Fannet, who was an awful flirt, perfectly outrageous! And now Mrs. Fannet!’

Mrs. Fannet serenely gathered up the pictures without saying anything.

But Mrs. Blakeley said, ‘Pooh — James? He never had a case in his life except Emmeline. He fell in love with her when she was sixteen —’

‘Sixteen,’ breathed Celia.

— ‘and just kept it up until she had time to notice him. That was the way he did it.’

‘I think those long early devotions are lovely things,’ said Mrs. Jessup.

But they did n’t look at Mr. Fannet.

‘Did n’t you, grandpa?’ cried Celia, on the brink of great disappointment.

But at that moment Mrs. Blakeley’s nephew-in-law from Spencer came tooting up dustily to take her on to the next stage of her visiting, and with much talk and movement everybody, even to Celia, was all at once gone. No one answered Celia.

Mr. Fannet mused a space when they were all away, and then set busily about watering the grass on the shady side of the lawn, until he was called to supper. He was very reserved all through the meal and talked little.

Filled with natural feminine compunction, since she was not in the least at fault, Mrs. Fannet set herself to make his evening as cheerful as possible. Not entirely fathoming his mood, she ventured at last, cautiously, upon another experiment.

‘I wonder where David is to-night,’ she began.

‘ Off somewhere with Wilma, I suppose,’ said Mr. Fannet resignedly, with no perceptible acidity.

‘Oh, yes. I saw them pass. Wilma was looking so pretty.’

‘Yes, she’s a pretty girl,’ Mr. Fannet conceded. Then he added with a little petulance, ‘David might as well marry her and quit.’

‘It will be more like beginning,’ said Mrs. Fannet smiling. Then she went on softly, ‘They’re having the best time they’ve ever had yet, James, — are n’t they?’

‘ We ought to know,’ said James more happily, a little reëstablished.

Some time later in the evening he came out of a period of silent meditation to say, ‘One thing I like about Wilma is, she’s so modest. I hate to see women too forward, especially with the men.’