bath robe drawn about
her. Always her greeting was the same.

"Good morning, David. Another glorious day, isn't it?"

Then Julia came splashing out in Aunt Connie's new rose-colored boudoir
slippers, with Connie in hot barefooted pursuit. And the new day had
begun, the riotous, delirious day, with Julia at the helm.

Connie had amusing merry tales to tell of her work, and her friends,
and the family back home. And time had to be crowded a little to make
room for long drives in the Harmer Six. Carol promptly learned to
drive it herself, and David, tentatively at first, talked of trying his
own hand on it. And finally he did, and took a boyish satisfaction in
his ability to manipulate the gears. Oh, perhaps it made him a little
more short of breath, and he found that his nerves were more highly
keyed than in the old time days,--anyhow he came home tired, hungry,
ready to sleep.

Even the occasional windy or cloudy days, when the Harmer Six was left
wickedly wasting in the garage, had their attractions. How the girls
did talk! Sometimes, when they had finished the dishes, Carol, intent
on Connie's story, stood patiently rubbing the dish pan a hundred, a
thousand times, until David would call pleadingly, "Girls, come out
here and talk." Then, recalled in a flash, they rushed out to him,
afraid the endless chatter would tire him, but happy that he liked to
hear it.

"Speaking of lovers," Connie would begin brightly,--for like so many of
the very charming girls who see no charm in matrimony, most of Connie's
conversation dealt with that very subject. And it was what her
auditors liked best of all to hear. Why, sometimes Carol would
interrupt right in the middle of some account of her success on the
papers, to ask if a certain man was married, or young, or good looking.
After all, getting married was the thing. And Connie was not
sufficiently enthusiastic about that. Writing stories was very well,
and poems and books had their place no doubt, but Shakespeare himself
never turned out a masterpiece to compare with Julia sitting plump and
happy in the puddle of mud to the left of the kitchen door, her round
pink face streaked and stained and grimy.

"I really did decide to get married once," Connie began confidentially,
when they were comfortably settled on the porch by David's cot. "It
was when I was in Mount Mark one time. Julia was so sweet I thought I
could not possibly wait another minute. I kept thin