"Please answer me, Sam," she insisted. "Well, of course you've got me. You'd have to haul in the young person by the heels, and----" "And what, exactly, if you please?" "You might illustrate--with some fragile, concrete object, like an egg--as to what would happen if he fell out," said Sam, with exceeding mildness, "and----" "In other words," she interrupted him triumphantly, "I ought to interfere _some_ of the time between cause and effect. The question being when to interfere and when not to." "Exactly!" he said, planting an irrelevant kiss on the pink cheek nearest him. "And that, my dear Betty, is your job--and, of course, mine, when I'm here. But I still hold that the natural penalty is best--when it's convincingly painful yet entirely innocuous." "What is the natural penalty for eating cookies out of the box when you've been forbidden to do it?" she wanted to know. He chuckled as certain memories of his boyhood came back to him. "My word!" he said, "I wish I could ever taste anything half as good as the cookies out of Aunt Julia Brewster's crock--it was a cooky-crock in those days. Of course I was forbidden to go to it without permission, and also of course I did it." "What happened?" she demanded, the mischief growing bolder in her eyes. He reflected. "Aunt Julia wouldn't let me have any at table on several occasions; but I--er--regret to say that I was not duly impressed by the punishment. A cooky--one cooky--decorously taken from a china plate at the conclusion of a meal did not, in my youthful opinion, court comparison with six--eight--ten cookies, moist and spicy from their seclusion and eaten with an uncloyed appetite. Let's--er--change the subject for the moment, my dear. Of course I'm right, but I appear to be hopelessly treed. Tell me how our friend Miss Tripp is getting on. She appeared somewhat depressed at dinner-time, and I didn't like to ask for information for fear there was nothing doing." Elizabeth sighed sympathetically. "Evelyn had a dreadfully disappointing day," she told him. "But"--her eyes dancing again--"she met Mr. Hickey down town, and he actually invited her to lunch with him." Sam whistled softly. "Hickey is progressing," he said approvingly. "Did he take her to the business men's lunchroom? Hickey has conscientious scruples against going anywhere else. I asked him into Colby's one day and he declined on the ground of his duty as a constant patron of the B. M. L. He said his table was reserved for him there by the season, and----" "How absurd!" laughed Elizabeth. "But, I was going to tell you; Evelyn remembered another engagement, and so----" she stopped short, her eyes growing luminous. "Sam," she said suddenly, "I don't know what to think of Evelyn; she really didn't have any lunch at all; she said so when she came. I made her a cup of tea; she looked so worn and tired. I wonder if Mr. Hickey could have said anything, or---- What do you think, Sam?"