o be
somebody like Hermione. You can't get on at all with young girls. As
long as you remember they're around, you're afraid to say anything
except milk and water out of a bottle that makes them furious, and then
if you forget whom you're talking to and begin thinking out loud,
developing some idea or other, you--simply paralyze them.

"Well, Hermione's sophisticated and clever, she's lived all over the
place; she isn't old yet, and she was a brick about that awful husband
of hers--never made any fuss--bluffed it out until he, luckily, died. Of
course she'll marry again, and I just thought, if you liked the idea, it
might as well be you."

"I don't know," said Rodney, "whether Mrs. Woodruff knows what she wants
or not, but I do. She wants a run for her money--a big house to live in
three months in the year, with a flock of servants and a fleet of
motor-cars, and a string of what she'll call cottages to float around
among, the rest of the time. And she'll want a nice, tame, trick husband
to manage things for her and be considerate and affectionate and
amusing, and, generally speaking, Johnny-on-the-spot whenever she wants
him. If she has sense enough to know what she wants in advance, it will
be all right. She can take her pick of dozens. But if she gets a
sentimental notion in her head--and I've a hunch that she's subject to
them--that she wants a real man, with something of his own to do,
there'll be, saving your presence, hell to pay. And if the man happened
to be me ...!"

Frederica stretched her slim arms outward. Thoughtful-faced, she made no
comment on his analysis of the situation, unless a much more observant
person than Rodney might have imagined there was one in the deliberate
way in which she turned her rings, one at a time, so that the brilliant
masses of gems were inside, and then clenched her hands over them.

He had got up and was ranging comfortably up and down the room.

"I know I look more or less like a nut to the people who've always known
us--father's and mother's friends, and most of their children. But I
give you my word, Freddy, that most of them look like nuts to me. Why,
they live in curiosity shops--so many things around, things they have
and things they've got to do, that they can't act or think for fear of
breaking something.

"Why a man should load himself up with three houses and a yacht, a
stable of motor-cars, and God knows what besides, when he's rich enough
to buy himself real s