"There's a 'usual crowd': the three young ladies, commonly; one or two young men who understand how to tinker the oil-stove--which usually needs it--and how to prime the pump. They once asked me to do these things; but I've discovered that younger men enjoy it more than I do, so I let them do it. Besides these, a number of miscellaneous people, perhaps, who come out by trolley or in their own cars." "The young ladies always come?" asked Cope, brushing the sand from his chest. "Usually. Together. The Graces. Otherwise, what becomes of the Group?" "Well, I hope there'll be enough fellows to look after the stove and the pump--and them. I'm not much good at that last." "No?" "There's a knack about it--a technique--that I don't seem to possess. Nor do I seem greatly prompted to learn it." "Of course, there is no more reason for assuming that every man will make a good lover than that every woman will make a good mother or a good housekeeper." "Or that every adult male will make a good citizen, desiring the general welfare and bestirring himself to contribute his own share to it. I don't feel that I'm an especially creditable one." "So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts come up and slap us in the face." Randolph rose and relieved the basswood of the first garments. "Are you about ready for that final dip?" Cope made his last plunge and returned red and shivering to use the two handkerchiefs. "Well, we have thirty minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their march. On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping, dense or slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled expanse of blue, spreading toward a horizon even less determinate than before. "No, I'm not at all apt," said Cope, returning to his theme; "not even for self-defense. I suppose I'm pretty sure to get caught some time or other." "Each woman according to her powers and gifts. Varying degrees of desire, of determination, of dexterity. To be just, I might add a fourth _d_--devotion." "You've run the gauntlet," said Cope. "You seem to have come through all right." "Well," Randolph returned deprecatingly, "I can't really claim ever to have enlisted any woman's best endeavors." "I hope I shall have the same good luck. Of your four _d_'s, it's the dexterity that gives me the most dread." "Yes, the appeal (not always honest) to chivalry,--though devotion is sometimes a close second. You're manoeuvred into a position where you're made to think you 'must.' I've known chaps to marry on that basis.... It's weary waiting until Madame dies and Madonna steps into her place." "Meanwhile, safety in numbers." "Yes, even though you're in the very midst of wishing or of wondering--or of a careful concern to cloak either." "Don't dwell on it! You fill me with apprehensions."