It was surprising what a substantial proportion of our real short stop customers were sedate, respectable looking couples of middle age or even past. I couldn't help remembering, on several occasions, what Mrs. Barkin had said: "I got so I wouldn't have trusted my own grandmother not to rent a room with some fella for an hour!" Although I am not a prude, I am glad our motel has more than a ninety-five percent tourist trade, rather than a big short stop trade, as many motels have. Even though there is more money involved where there are a lot of "quickies," since the cabins occupied can be rerented, there would be little satisfaction to me in carrying on a business of that type. And certainly it would not promote a wholesome atmosphere in which to raise children. Grandma telephoned me from Los Angeles the night after her date with Mr. Wagonseller. Her call interrupted hostilities between me and Grant, who was pointing out to me carefully--for about the twentieth time--just why the lovely Chinese backscratcher I had bought in Palm Springs the time Grandma and I went there together was an unnecessary extravagance. Just before the telephone rang he had brushed aside my arguments in favor of the backscratcher ("What would you do," I had asked him sensibly, "if your back tickled and you were alone in the house with no one to scratch all the places on your back that you can't reach? You should give a little thought to things like that.") He had brushed that aside, and given me that infuriating, withering look he is so expert at, and made his final remark on the subject (one that I'm sure it had taken him days to think up): "If you ever had DT's you wouldn't see pink elephants--you'd see white ones!" I was very pleased that the telephone rang just then, making what he probably considered his great wit fall rather flat. I realized as I lifted the receiver that it was the day after the date Grandma was supposed to have had with Mr. Wagonseller. I suspected that this might be a report on the date; and sure enough, it was. "He took me to dinner," Grandma burbled, "and Thunderation! You should have see the way he spends the dough. Money ain't nothing to him. I got a notion he was a awful tight old bird, the way he talked in Palm Springs. Well, I swear'n, I got fooled that time! We had the most expensive dinner on the menu, and then we went to the Paramount. And blessed if he didn't even buy me a big box of chocolates!--He's a odd critter, though, awful odd. Last thing he says to me was, 'I'd like to do this again a week from tonight, I would all right.' It beats anything the way he talks--it's a scream to hear him." I smiled, and asked her if she was going to go out with him again.