that
instinct to monopolize their husbands. And when you think it over, we do
sort of give them the impression while we're courting them that they are
the whole cheese. But that isn't all. They've come to their senses on
some other matters. I think, for instance, they're beginning to get our
point of view on this flying proposition. Lulu hasn't hinted that she'd
like to fly for three months. She's never been so contented since, we
captured them. To do her justice, though, she always saw, when I pointed
it out to her, that flying was foolish, besides being dangerous."

"Well," Ralph said, "what between holding them down from the clouds and
keeping them away from the New Camp, managing them has been some job.
But I guess you're right, Honey. I think they're reconciled now to their
lot. If I do say it as shouldn't, Peachy seems like a regular woman
nowadays. She's braced up in fine style in the last two months. Her
color is much better; her spirits are high. When I get home at night,
she doesn't want to go out at all. If I say that I'm going to the
Clubhouse, she never raises a yip. In fact, she seems too tired to care.
She's always ready now to turn in when I do. For months and months, you
know, she sat up reading until all hours of the night and morning. But
now she falls asleep like a child."

"Then she's gotten over that insomnia?" Pete asked this casually and he
did not look at Ralph.

"Entirely," Ralph replied briefly, and in his turn he did not look at
Pete. "She's a perfectly healthy woman now. She gets her three squares
every day and her twelve hours every night--regular. I never saw such an
improvement in a woman."

"Well, when it comes to sleeping," Pete said, "I don't believe she's got
anything on Clara. I often find her dead to the world when I get home at
night. I jolly her about that--for she has always thought going to bed
early indicated lack of temperament. And as for teasing to be allowed
to fly, or to be taken out swimming, or to call on any of you, or to let
her tag me here--why, that's all stopped short. She keeps dozing off all
the evening. Sometimes in the midst of a sentence, she'll begin to nod.
Never saw her looking so well, though."

"Chiquita, on the contrary, isn't sleeping as much as she did," Frank
said. "She's more active, though--physically, I mean. She's rejoicing
at present over the fact that she's lost twenty-five, pounds in the last
three months. She said last night that she hadn'