"Between you and me, Bob," said Colonel Meredith, "an accurate count of our Southern population would proclaim a villain or two here and there. I was brought up to believe that to be born in a certain region was all that was necessary. But that's not so. I tell you this because I am afraid that when you are meeting people in New York and having a good time you will be wanting to lay down the law, to wit, that one Southerner can whip five Yankees. Don't do it. I will tell you a horrid truth. I was once whipped by a small-sized Frenchman within an inch of my life. He had studied _le boxe_ under Carpentier and I hadn't. Did you ever study _le boxe_? No? An Anglo-Saxon imagines that he was born boxing. And it takes a licking by a man of Latin blood to prove to him that he wasn't. Just because people make funny noises and monkey cries when they fight doesn't prove that they are afraid. There is nothing so ridiculous as a baboon going into action and nothing more terrible when he gets there." "The more you travel, Mel, the more you show a deplorable tendency to foul your own nest." "_I_ run down the South? I like that! But, my dear Bob, there is only one chosen people. And it isn't us." Here he made a significant gesture with his hands, turning the palms up, and they both laughed. "A Jew," he went on, "is what he is because he is a Jew. His good points and his bad are racial. But between two men of our race there is no material resemblance. One is mean, the other generous; one broad, one narrow; one brave, the other not. Do you know why hornless cows give less milk than horned cows? Because there are fewer of them. Do you know why there are more honest men in the North, and pretty girls, than there are in the South? Simply because there are more men and more girls. It also follows that there are more dishonest men and ugly girls; more of everything, in fact." He was slowly turning over the pages of _The Four Seasons_, looking always, with Pemaque in mind, at pictures of country houses. Suddenly he closed the magazine, looked pensively out of the window, and began to whistle with piercing sweetness. He once more opened the magazine, but this time with great caution as if he was half afraid that something disagreeable would jump out at him. Nothing did, however. He folded the magazine back upon itself and held it close to his eyes, then far off, then at mid-distance. "What's the matter with you?" said Bob Jonstone. "Nothing," said Meredith, "only I'm thinking there ought to be six of us instead of only two. Look at that page and tell me where we're going to spend the summer." Jonstone took the magazine and saw the six Darling sisters sitting on the float in their bathing-dresses. Presently he smiled and said: "You've just won an argument, Mel." "How's that?" "Why, in the South there wouldn't be so many of them--but maybe they are not always there. Maybe they were only there last summer." "Well, we can find out where they've gone, can't we?"