It was this new attitude perhaps which enabled him to take note of the taming of Mortimer Crabb, for when he visited the bride and groom in their sumptuous house in New York, he discovered that Crabb had formed the habit of the easy-chair after dinner, and that the married life, which all his days he had professed to abhor, was the life for him. It took the combined efforts of Burnett and Patricia to dislodge him. "He's absolutely impossible," said Patricia. "He says that he has solved the problem of happiness--that he has done with the world. It's so like a man," and she stamped her small foot, "to think that marriage is the end of everything when--as everyone knows--it's only the beginning. He's getting stout already, and I know, I'm positive that he is going to be bald. Won't you help me, Mr. Burnett?" "That's a dreadful prospect--Benedick, the married man. You only need carpet slippers and a cribbage-board, Mort, to make the picture complete. Have you stopped seeking opportunities?" "Ah, yes," drawled Crabb, "Patty is the only opportunity I ever had--at least--er--the only one worth embracing----" "Mortimer!" "And don't you ever go to the Club?" laughed Ross. "Oh, no. I'm taboo there since I lived in Philadelphia. Besides, I'm not a bachelor any more, you know. If Patty only wouldn't insist on dragging me out----" Patricia laughed. "Twice, Ross, already this winter," Crabb continued. "It's cruelty, nothing less." But the perpetrator of the outrage was smiling, and she leaned forward just then and laid her hand in that of her husband, saying with a laugh, "Mort, you know we'll have to get Ross married at once." "Me?" said Burnett, in alarm. "Of course. A bachelor only sneers at a Benedick when he has given up hoping----" "Oh, I say now--I'm not so old." "Then you do hope?" "Oh, no, I only wait--for a miracle." "This isn't the age of miracles," remarked Patty thoughtfully, "at least not miracles of that kind. How can you expect anyone to fall in love with you if you go on leaping from one end of the earth to the other. No girl wants to marry a kangaroo--even a diplomatic kangaroo." She paused and examined him with her head on one side. "And yet you know you're passably decent looking----" "Oh, thanks!" "Even distinguished--that foreign way of wearing your mustache is really quite fetching. You'll do, I think, with some coaching." "Will you coach me?" "I object," interrupted Crabb, lazily. "I will. You're quite worth marrying--I'm at least sure you wouldn't condemn your wife to her own lares and penates." "Not I. She'd get the wanderlust--or a divorce." "Don't boast, worse vagabonds than you have been tamed--come now, what shall she be--blonde or brunette?" Burnett shrugged his shoulders. "I'm quite indifferent--pigment is cheap nowadays." "Now you're scoffing."