‘But Annabel! Is she coming back? I want her!’

‘I thought — it’s hard to say, Howard, but I thought she ought to stay away until you earn her.’

‘Hm. Man earn his own wife? Well, maybe it isn’t such a sour idea. It’ll be something to work for!’

Later Hazel purred, ‘My, I didn’t know we three would all be together again, sitting cosy on a blanket and eating bacon! Isn’t it nice here! No telephones ringing.’

‘Practically never,’ Fred assured her.

‘And Fred: I don’t want to be too light-footed, but some day would you like to go travelling again? I would so like to see Scandinavia, if they don’t manage to have a war in Europe, and — oh, not make a business of wandering, like these silly restless tourists, but just see a FEW places, say like Brazil and Egypt and Cairo and Java and Iceland and so on. What do you think, Fred?’

‘I don’t know yet. Say, here’s a hot one! Right there in the tent I’ve got a letter about it that I was writing to you. Yessir, by golly, just this minute. I’ll tell you, dear. Just now I feel like I ought to stick around a while and . . .’

Then Howard took charge; the Howard of old, cocky and omniscient, yet more affectionate than the old Howard had ever been:

‘Now you’re not looking at it right, Dad. Way I see it, you old codgers ought to get out more and learn how the world is changing. I tell you, you haven’t any idea what the young fellows are doing, these days, Dad. There’s nobody like you for steadiness, but you ought to take a chance once in a while.’

‘Indeed you ought to,’ said Hazel.

‘I see,’ said Frederick William Cornplow. ‘Say! In Brazil we ought to get doggone good coffee. Well, you can sit up and talk till sunrise if you want to, but the old man’s going to turn in. I hear where there’s good coffee in Egypt, too. We’ll see. Good night — good night!’

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