"You can't conceive of his holding them if he did remember them, I suppose," chuckled Dr. Wilson. "Of course he couldn't. No mortal could." "That's as bad as my husband," observed Mrs. Frostwinch, with a billowy motion of her neck, a movement characteristic and perhaps the result of unconscious cerebration induced by a secret knowledge that her neck was too long. "I tried to get out of him what Mr. Fairfield said when he came to see him about May; and I give you my word that after I'd worn myself to shreds trying to beguile him, I was no wiser than before." "I tell you so entirely all my own secrets, Anna," her husband answered, "that you might let me keep those of other people." "Indeed, I can't help your keeping them," was her reply. "That's what I complain of. If I only had a choice in the matter, I shouldn't mind." "If Jack Neligage is in the way of proposing," Langdon observed in his deliberate manner, "I should think he'd do it for himself." "Oh, bless you," Mrs. Neligage responded quickly, "Jack can't afford to marry. I've brought him up better than to suppose he could." "Happy the man that has so wise a mother," was Langdon's comment. "If you don't believe in marriages without money, Mrs. Neligage," asked Mrs. Wilson, "what do you think of Ethel Mott and Thayer Kent?" "Just think of their marrying on nothing, and going out to live on a cattle ranch," put in Mrs. Frostwinch. "I wonder if Ethel will have to milk?" Dr. Wilson gave a laugh full of amusement. "They don't milk on cattle ranches," he corrected. "She may have to mount a horse and help at a round-up, though." "Well, if she likes that kind of a burial," Mrs. Neligage said, "it's her own affair, I suppose. I'd rather be cremated." "Oh, it isn't as bad as that," Mr. Frostwinch observed genially. "They'll have a piano, and that means some sort of civilization." "I suppose she'll play the _ranz des vaches_ on the piano," Mrs. Wilson laughed. "Of course it's madness," Langdon observed, "but they'll like it for a while. I can't understand, though, how Miss Mott can be so foolish. I always supposed she was rather a sensible girl." "Does this prove that she isn't?" asked Alice. "Don't you think a girl that leaves civilization, and goes to live in the wilderness just to follow a man, shows a lack of cleverness?" The seriousness of the tone in which Alice had asked her question had drawn all eyes in her direction, and it might easily be that the knowledge of the interest which she was supposed to have in penniless Jack Neligage would in any case have given to her words especial mark. "That depends on what life is for," Alice answered now, in her low, even voice. "If she is happier with Thayer Kent on a cattle ranch than she would be anywhere else without him, I think she shows the best kind of sense." "But think what a stupid life she'll lead," Langdon persisted. "She doesn't know what she's giving up."