On a trip to Banning's well-stocked library, I was searching the Encyclopedia Britannica for "Mother Carey's Chickens," in order to use correctly a reference to them in a farcical story I planned to write about a sea voyage. Whenever I look up a certain thing in a reference book I am compelled, by the intriguing lure of the other words in big, bold-face capitals, to waste time and energy studying the details of five or six subjects which bear no relation to the subject I'm looking up except in that they start with the same letters. My eye being caught by "motet" (which is, I learned against my will, vocal music in the contrapuntal style) it occurred to me that it would be interesting to look up "motel," since I must be in the immediate vicinity of the word. To my surprise, "motel" wasn't listed in the Britannica. Piqued, I searched in several other encyclopedias and reference books for "motel," and finally even for the more lowly terms "auto court" and "tourist camp." Not even those words were mentioned. Finally, in desperation, I tackled the huge unabridged dictionary, with the same result. Compilers of the dictionary had not allowed the word "motel" to sully its sacred pages. Obviously, according to authorities, there is no such thing as a motel. However, I feel that I can with safety state that the authorities are all wet. One day Grant came home for dinner after one of his two-hour talk fests. "I thought I'd run up once and see Mr. Bradley," he said, sitting down at the table. "I wanted to talk over some business with him, about the motel association, but he was too upset to even think about that." David made a remark, which we ignored, about Grant's split "infilitive." Mrs. Bradley, it seemed, had at last become so bad that they had had to take her to an asylum. Someone had substituted a fertile, ready-to-hatch egg for the china egg Mr. Bradley had provided for her to amuse herself with, and after a few days of basking in the warmth under the layers and layers of her garments, the egg had hatched--not into the human baby Mrs. Bradley had wanted, but, understandably enough, into a fluffy yellow baby chicken. The shock and disappointment had pushed her tottering reason completely into the abyss. "It was bound to happen sooner or later," Grant said. "Mr. Bradley says he knew, himself, that he wouldn't be able to keep her home with him much longer." "Who substituted the real egg?" I asked finally. Grant buttered a slice of bread grimly. "Moejy," he said.