"About ten." "You mean they left the key, and took all their stuff, and really checked out?" "That's wight," Mrs. Featherbrain replied, the wrinkles in her forehead appearing and disappearing. "Did they ask for part of their money back?" I persisted. "No." "Well--that's odd," I said. "Why, that must have happened at your court lots of times!" she protested, a cloud of smoke pouring out from her fluttering nostrils. "Hasn't it? Do you ever go out and look, about midnight, to see if some of the cars haven't pulled out?" "Why--why, no," I said. "I can't imagine why they would leave. After all, they've paid their money, and if they didn't want to spend the night before traveling on, why would they--" Mr. and Mrs. Featherbrain exchanged glances. "Have you ever seen any of the motels on Ventura Boulevard, in Los Angeles?" Mrs. Featherbrain asked. "Mmm--yes, I think so," I said. "There are quite a few of them, aren't there? I remember wondering, in fact, how they could possibly get enough tourists to keep them filled up, right in a big city like that." My hostess shot a look at her husband, and blinked rapidly several times. "Well, sir," Mr. Featherbrain began, speaking with apparent difficulty, "Yuh know, not ewybody that stays in motels is tourists." I looked at him blankly. His chin was growing red. Mrs. Featherbrain's features were moving violently, and all at the same time. "You never were in the motel business before, were you?" she asked. I shook my head. She sighed. "Well, you see," she explained, "sometimes young couples that are out together--well, they don't have any place to go, and so--of course it isn't wight, and the sort of people we know don't do it, but--and of course the motel owner isn't to blame if some people, instead of using the cabins to spend the night and sleep in, use them to ..." Her eyebrows were leaping wildly, and she turned to Mr. Featherbrain. "You tell her, dear," she begged him. But at last I understood. I got up, embarrassed partly at the conversation and partly at my own display of stupidity, and went home. This was an aspect of the motel business which was new to me, and I resolved to find out whether such use of motels on the highway was common. I had developed a library-born friendship with Mrs. Barkin, the owner of the rather shabby Sylvan Motel toward town, and I planned to bring up the subject at our next meeting. I didn't let my unhappy experience with the house movers prevent me from learning to drive. "Twice in a lifetime it couldn't happen!" I told Grant; and I took the car out on Williams street day after day, sometimes staying out only ten minutes, and other times staying half an hour or more; and finally I was so adept at handling the car that I went to the Banning police department on a day when driving tests were being given, took the test, passed it, and received my driver's license.