"No, in conversation," he said seriously. "Subjects of General Discussion Suitable for Social Gatherings. I thought, seeing as I'm going out in society so much these days, I ought to work up a different line of talk than a fellow needs in business. The sort of things _you_ like, you know--not learned, exactly, but sort of high-brow.--Books and all.--They send us out a subject once a week. 'All about the North Pole' it was once. 'The Infant in Portraiture,' another time. Last week it was 'The Armadillo and Its Ways.' Great scheme, ain't it?" "Stupendous!" murmured Joan. "But, Archie, suppose you meet a fellow-student at some--er, social gathering who happens to be pursuing the same line of cultivation? Mightn't that be rather embarrassing?" "Give me away, you mean? What's the dif? I would give him away, too, and we'd have something to talk about! Anyway, to know all about something's a mighty fine idea, even if you don't get a chance to tell folks." Joan did not smile. She realized that here, manifesting itself no matter how uncouthly, was the true spirit of research, a thing which she respected above all other impulses of the human brain. She said softly, "Keep on with your correspondence course by all means!--only, Archie, don't talk about it to other people, will you? They might not understand." He gave her a quick little grin of comprehension. "Not on your life! It don't pay to wise people up to what a boob you are.--Except you. I guess you know, anyway!" CHAPTER XXX Joan, in yielding to family pressure temporarily, had by no means given up the idea of what she had learned recently to call her economic independence--a subject discussed frequently, if not very fruitfully, by her friends the Jabberwocks, who preached rather more radically than they practiced. "You see," as they explained when reproached by Joan with inconsistency, "we believe in that sort of thing, of course! but it isn't as if we really _needed_ it." (Which was likewise the Jabberwockian attitude toward suffrage.) Joan, however, not only believed in economic independence, but needed it--as she reminded herself at gradually increasing intervals. She was in danger, and knew it, of going over to Mammon. She had found it far easier than she expected to live along from moment to moment, accepting life as it came, enjoying the surface without questioning the depths. The habit of mere material luxury is an insidious thing that fastens upon one unaware; and Joan had all her father's taste for the good things of life. She had begun to form many little extravagant ways, such, for instance, as wearing silk stockings under her heaviest shoes, using a towel only once before casting it aside, having her hair shampooed down town when she was perfectly able to do it herself in her own bathroom. Not very reckless extravagances, perhaps, from the point of view of her new friends; but the sort of thing which the Misses Darcy observed with something like awe.