"Would any R.A. dare to contaminate a Gantry's home with his presence? Relax, Jimmy." Bowdler sprawled out, his large t...h hanging over one arm of the over-stuffed chair. "The only chance we're taking is that Gantry may come here. I checked and found that he is conferring with the Fathers today." How easily these two men spoke the terrible words. It made Comstock sit ever straighter on the very edge of the chair he occupied. The cool air of the room which seemed to have been washed and cleansed before entering the sacrosanct area was pleasant on Jimmy's heated face even while he wondered how a windowless room could be so aired. "I gather," Bowdler said as he smiled at Jimmy's obvious consternation, "that you have never been in a home of one of the Thirty before?" Dully, Jimmy shook his head no. "You'll find, laddy boy, that this is a strange world we live in with many paradoxes that to Grundy and me, demand an explanation. It wasn't too long ago that we were like you and found only elderly ladies attractive. But you know, as soon as we found out that the Thirty like their women young, we too began to find something vastly exciting in youth." * * * * * So alarmed that he dare not continue to look at Bowdler, Jimmy looked around the room trying to find something to change the subject, some object on which to focus. On a book shelf nearby he saw one of his childhood favorites, and grabbed it with a feeling of relief. It was a copy of Father Goose. He ran his eye over the first poem and drew from the verse of Jack and Jill the knowledge that the world had not gone insane. There, it was just as he remembered it, "Jack and Jill went up the hill To ..... a .... of water. Jack fell down and broke his ..... And Jill came ........ after." He riffled through the pages as Bowdler went on talking. On page ten was another favorite, "Little Polly Flinders Sat among the cinders Warming her pretty little .... Her mother came and caught her And whipped her little daughter For spoiling her nice new ......." But the assurance of the known faded away as Bowdler's voice went rumbling on and on. "It occurred to both of us that perhaps there was some reason why we are brought up to esteem aged women so much. After all, if old ladies are as exciting as we are taught that they are, how come the Gantrys and others of the Thirty only have young concubines? This was one of the questions we asked ourselves, and we think we have the answer...." Grundy broke in, "Have you ever wondered, Comstock, why it is that the only women who have children are the ones who are called up before the Fathers?" This was even worse than the time Comstock's father had told him the "facts of life." Much worse, for what Grundy was intimating was at variance with what his father had taught him. It was worse.