Felicia started indignantly. “Why, Payrent, Payrent! What do you mean by such—recalcitrating? I thought you staked your life on that Lafayette business!” “I’m afraid you haven’t been keeping up with the times,” retorted the parent. “For the past ten years, at least, I’ve discounted the tale. I’ve been putting two and two together, and I really don’t see the sense in trying to make a baker’s dozen out of it, do you?” “Oh, well, if you’re bringing it down to cold mathematics, father, I rather think you’re going to miss some of the joys of your job!” “On the contrary, my dear Flickey, the joys will be all the keener.” “Well, I wish you’d explain your change of base.” “I haven’t made any change of base. And haven’t I told you a hundred times that the true collector should never venture out of doors without being armored in doubt? Why, from the time of dear Grammer Bradford’s maunderings about Lafayette in Egypt, when I was a little boy in a wine-colored plaid shirt, I had my misgivings about the tale. It’s the doubt that makes the chase interesting. Of course, all of us Bradfords know that our Fairlee ancestor was with Paul Jones on the ship Ranger in the harbor of Quiberon in 1779 when that ship received the first national salute ever given to the American flag in Europe.” Flickey stifled a yawn behind her preposterous dinner-ring. “So far, so good. Next, we have reason to believe that our seafaring grandsire got up to Paris that same year, and there ordered the Fairlee porringer, the cover of which I now possess, the bowl being mysteriously dog-lost.” “Yes, dog-gone lost, forever and a day.” Felix fingered the scrolled thumb-piece of the supposed John Cony. “But didn’t you ever stop to think, my dear, just what Lafayette was up to, those days? He was only twenty when he came over to us, in 1777. Is it at all likely that he’d ever been in Egypt before that time? Not enough to notice, I’ll be bound! No, I can’t think he was celebrated enough in 1779 to warrant having his exploits, real or imaginary, engraved on the side of a porringer, to make a household word of himself.” “Another illusion overboard,” cried Felicia hopefully, as if pleased with a parent’s progress. But she departed, thoughtful. “Do you know,” she announced to her mother, afterwards, “dad doesn’t really swallow that Lafayette stuff, any more than you and I do?” “Of course not, dearie!” “Well, of all the gay parental deceivers, you two are the limit! You’ll be saying there’s no Santa Claus, next!” Flickey flounced off in a dudgeon not wholly pretended. She was thoughtful, too. As her parents’ interest in the quest waned, her own waxed stronger. “The old dears got a rise out of _me_, all right,” she confided to Jimmy Alexander, a Princeton boy who had succeeded in wresting forever from Yale Felicia’s sworn allegiance, originally granted to Harvard, and for a brief hour wavering between Amherst and Columbia.