“I didn’t use such language,” protested Marion shakily but vehemently. “I said you had been horrible to me, and you’re being even more horrible now. Stanley, let me go, take your hand away from from me! This is awful-you know it is! I can’t get used to the kind of jokes you people play. I can’t and I won’t! I demand respect-even from my brother-in-law. I won’t have this! I’m positively crushed against you and you’re brutal, brutal, taking advantage of your strength and our isolation!”

He whistled long and loud, and Marion clapped a trembling little hand to his lips. “They’ll all hear-and come-and see-and think terrible things!” she whispered, alarmed.

“I thought you were complaining of isolation,” he said with a smile. “I was going to provide you with a tribunal of fair judges who would decide your case strictly on its merits and determine how many smacks your pretty bottom deserves.

“You should be ashamed to expose me that way!” cried the girl, struggling vainly in his enwrapping arms. “Let my arms loose and let me cover myself. Stanley Cochrane, if you keep on patting me down there, I shall scream! You know this is well past a joke, no matter what all these frivolous creatures think permissible. Listen, Stanley, have some regard for my standards, of what I think right and wrong!”

The touch of pathos in her tone, in the flushed and lovely little face and the gray eyes raised in pleading to him moved the excited man. “Silly dear. Oh, silly, silly little dear!” he said softly. “There’d be much more fun in your life if only you wouldn’t adhere so obstinately to outworn standards that make intimate bits of frivolity something formidable and disgraceful. I think it’s my duty to try to convert you to a modern view. Perhaps I’ll spare you the whacking you deserve on this one naked buttock. But you shall pay a little forfeit, young lady.”