"Oceans! He used to call at the house all the time. It _was_ funny, too. Gerald used to think he was the one Roland was coming to see, and Naomi--she's my sister--used to think that he was coming to see her; and all the time I knew that I was the person he was calling on. It's funny, isn't it, how old folks will get those queer ideas?" "Your sister is so very old?" "Terribly. She was thirty on her last birthday." "Horrors! She _is_ ancient, isn't she?" "Awfully! Although Naomi isn't so bad looking--" "_Your_ sister couldn't be." "Aw, quit kidding! But she isn't bad-looking, really. Lord knows she deserves a better husband than she drew. Honestly, when the divine providence was handing out shrubbery, they planted a lemon-tree in his yard just before he was born." "Probably your sister doesn't agree with your opinion." "Oh, yes, she does! Of course, she doesn't talk to me about it, but I know she ain't wild about Gerald. How could she be? He's old enough to be her father--forty-two, if he's a minute. Don't think of anything but business and making money. And he's _terribly_ jealous!" "A very complimentary picture you draw of him." "If I wrote what I thought about him, I could be arrested for sending it through the mails. Goodness knows, no husband at all is a hundred per cent better than a man like that. Not that he beats Naomi. Fact is, I'd think he was more human if he did. Only time I ever like him is when he flies up in a rage. He swears simply _elegantly_!" "Indeed?" "I love it. And I don't think it's wicked to love swearing, do you? I was reading in a book once something about swearing being a perfectly natural mental reaction, or something--like a safety-valve on a steam-engine. If the engine didn't have the safety-valve, it would blow up. So if it's true that swearing is like that, then there can't be any harm in it; because anything that keeps a person from blowing up must be pretty good, don't you think?" "It does sound reasonable." "Not that I swear myself--not out loud, anyway, but sometimes, when I'm right peeved at Gerald or Naomi or somebody, I get in my room and say swear-words right out loud. And I feel ever so much better for it!" The conversation languished while she again attacked the sundae. Carroll spoke: "Have you seen your friend, Miss Gresham, lately?" "Hazel? I'll say I have--although she's horribly weepy since poor Roland was killed. Of course, I'm not heartless or anything like that; but what's the use of crying all the time when there are just as good fish in the sea as ever were caught? I told her that, but it don't seem to do a single bit of good. She just keeps saying, 'Poor Roland is dead,' just as if I didn't know it as well as she does--him having been crazy about me even before he was about her. I'm sort of afraid it's gone to the poor girl's head. She's simply _horribly_ upset!" "That's not unnatural, is it?" "No-o, I suppose not; but it's terribly old-fashioned."