"I'll speak plainly if I can," said Peter, striding up and down. "And when I miss a point, someone can call me on it." "I don't know what you're after," said Tony, who was holding Marie's hand in a manner that should have disturbed Hedgerly's sleep. "But I'm for it." Peter smiled. "Hedgerly is supposed to be my grandson," he said. "I'm to marry Marie. We are to celebrate a golden wedding. Fine and dandy. Now look: The one weak point in Hedgerly's wild story is the question of why he came back?" "Because it is so written," suggested Joan. "Fine," grinned Peter. "Now leaving all personalities out of this for the moment, Marie, if you were introduced to me at a party, would you be interested in me?" "Perhaps," she said. "On the other hand, Peter, you're not a spectacular chap. One must really know you before one can see what makes you tick. Then they're not certain. I wouldn't know, really." "But how do you feel now?" "Resentful! As much as I know and admit that you are a fine man, Peter, I feel as though I were being forced into a duty that offered little compensation." Tony nodded and then said: "Look. I can sum this all up, I think. Peter, you are welcome to enter my home at any time. You can even be known and recognized as my wife's best friend." "Just so," interjected Joan, "he doesn't get too friendly." Peter grinned. "We're a long way off of the track," he said. "This is as much a time-cliché as the fiction about the man who stabbed his father. The joker is, what do we do about it?" "What can we do?" asked Joan helplessly. "All we have to do is to foul him up just once," said Peter. "If he doesn't come back to annoy us, then Marie and I may never meet." "In other words," said Tony, "the pattern is complete only when Hedgerly comes back and interferes." Peter nodded. "Either we live by accident and die by accident or we live by plan and die by plan. If our lives are written in the Book of Acts, then no effort is worth the candle. For there will be those who will eternally strive to be good and yet shall fail. There will be others who care not nor strive not and yet will thrive. Why? Only because it is so written. And by whom? By the omnipotent God. Who, my friends, has then written into our lives both the good and the evil that we do ourselves! He moves us as pawns, directs us to strive against odds yet knows that we must fail because he planned it that way. For those, then, that fail there is everlasting hell. "So," said Peter harshly, "I plan that this goldfish shall try to live in air." He plunged his hand into the aquarium and dropped a flipping fish onto the table. "I direct that this goldfish shall try to live. See, it strives hard to live in an unfriendly medium. It fails--of course, because the goldfish is incapable of following my dictate." Peter's face took on an angry expression. "It has failed to obey me," he thundered. "Ergo it must be punished!"