“How mean! A darling, lovely girl like Mildred!” cried the younger sister. “And they told me when I got back from California-after you had swept her off her feet and married her-that you called her Glory, short for Glory of all the world! Men are nice things to have about!”

“Thank you. I was certain I could quickly convert you to that theory,” he smiled.

“I shall marry at the age of eighty-two,” Marion told the blue water of Lake Michigan.

“I advise seventy-five-when you will still be sweet and full of distilled ardor,” he suggested. “That will give you fifty-five years more in which to sow wild oats from here to Suez.”

His sister-in-law flushed sensitively and he knew it was because of his use of the word “ardor.”

“You have a very bad effect on a person,” she decided. “I was talking seriously trying to bring worthwhile ideas into our conversation and suddenly I find we are talking nonsense.”

“I love only serious thoughts myself,” he observed. “It is only when trying to humor some minx that I ever converse lightly, and I was about to advise you, when you became flippant, not to count upon any advance in mankind down through the ages save in material progress. He is much less worthy of, say, Plato and Aristotle. And the best thing to do is to thumb your nose at his rules and regulations, which are calculated to make life even more drab than it need be.”

“Heavens! That would lead us to chaos-to paganism-to anarchy!”

“And the best thought of the ages,” he went on eloquently, “boils down to the question of whether anyone ever informed you that your legs are without superiors and equals among the snowy and superb limbs which have launched ships and many more important things?”

“I knew it was a mistake,” mourned Marion distressedly, “to put on this indecent suit and come out here with you. Mildred laughed at the prim one I brought from Grandmother’s in California. This is one of hers-and I’m afraid I bulge here and there, more than she does. But I outweigh her by only eight pounds and she swore it was just right for me. When I protested she told me not to be silly but it’s you who are being silly!”