y, Ted dear," Mrs. Babbitt said placidly, "it's not at all nice, your
talking of fighting this way!"

"Well, gosh almighty, that's a fine way to appreciate--And then suppose
I was walking with YOU, Ma, and somebody passed a slighting remark--"

"Nobody's going to pass no slighting remarks on nobody," Babbitt
observed, "not if they stay home and study their geometry and mind
their own affairs instead of hanging around a lot of poolrooms and
soda-fountains and places where nobody's got any business to be!"

"But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!"

Mrs. Babbitt chirped, "Well, if they did, I wouldn't do them the honor
of paying any attention to them! Besides, they never do. You always hear
about these women that get followed and insulted and all, but I don't
believe a word of it, or it's their own fault, the way some women look
at a person. I certainly never 've been insulted by--"

"Aw shoot. Mother, just suppose you WERE sometime! Just SUPPOSE! Can't
you suppose something? Can't you imagine things?"

"Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!"

"Certainly your mother can imagine things--and suppose things! Think
you're the only member of this household that's got an imagination?"
Babbitt demanded. "But what's the use of a lot of supposing? Supposing
never gets you anywhere. No sense supposing when there's a lot of real
facts to take into considera--"

"Look here, Dad. Suppose--I mean, just--just suppose you were in your
office and some rival real-estate man--"

"Realtor!"

"--some realtor that you hated came in--"

"I don't hate any realtor."

"But suppose you DID!"

"I don't intend to suppose anything of the kind! There's plenty of
fellows in my profession that stoop and hate their competitors, but if
you were a little older and understood business, instead of always going
to the movies and running around with a lot of fool girls with their
dresses up to their knees and powdered and painted and rouged and God
knows what all as if they were chorus-girls, then you'd know--and
you'd suppose--that if there's any one thing that I stand for in the
real-estate circles of Zenith, it is that we ought to always speak
of each other only in the friendliest terms and institute a spirit of
brotherhood and cooperation, and so I certainly can't suppose and I
can't imagine my hating any realtor, not even that dirty, fourflushing
society sneak, Cecil Rountree!"

"But--"

"And there's no If, And or But about it! But if I WE