made Dinky-Dunk sit up and stare at me. "Look here, Gee-Gee, I
don't mind a bit of book-learning, but I hate to see you tear the whole
tree of knowledge up by the roots and knock me down with it! And it was
_salons_ we were talking about, and not the wicked ladies of the past!"

"Well, the only _salon_ I ever saw in America had the commercial air of
a millinery opening where tea happened to be served," I promptly
declared. "And the only American woman I ever knew who wanted to have a
_salon_ was a girl we used to call Asafetida Anne. And if I explained
why you'd make a much worse face than that, my Diddums. But she had a
weakness for black furs and never used to wash her neck. So the Plimpton
Mark was always there!"

"Don't get bitter, Gee-Gee," announced Dinky-Dunk as he proceeded to
light his pipe. And I could afford to laugh at his solemnity.

"I'm not bitter, Honey Chile; I'm only glad I got away from all that
Bohemian rubbish. You may call me a rattle-box, and accuse me of being
temperamental now and then--which I'm not--but the one thing in life
which I love is _sanity_. And that, Dinky-Dunk, is why I love you, even
though you are only a big sunburnt farmer fighting and planning and
grinding away for a home for an empty-headed wife who's going to fail at
everything but making you love her!"

Then followed a few moments when I wasn't able to talk,

... The sequel's scarce essential--
Nay, more than this, I hold it still
Profoundly confidential!

Then as we sat there side by side I got thinking of the past and of the
Bohemians before whom I had once burned incense. And remembering a
certain visit to Box Hill with Lady Agatha's mother, years and years
ago, I had to revise my verdict on authors, for one of the warmest
memories in all my life is that of dear old Meredith in his wheelchair,
with his bearded face still flooded with its kindly inner light and his
spirit still mellow with its unquenchable love of life. And once as a
child, I went on to tell Dinky-Dunk, I had met Stevenson. It was at
Mentone, and I can still remember him leaning over and taking my hand.
His own hand was cold and lean, like a claw, and with the quick instinct
of childhood I realized, too, that he was _condescending_ as he spoke to
me, for all the laugh that showed the white teeth under his drooping
black mustache. Wrong as it seemed, I didn't like him any more than I
afterward liked the Sargent portrait of him, which was really a