"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?"

"It doesn't seem in strict good breeding to pursue ladies one doesn't know."

"Why, bless you, I chased all over Europe after a face I saw in The Sketch, only to find out that she was willing to marry anybody with money and had a voice like a guinea-hen. And after I'd found that out, she chased me all over Europe and as far East as Cairo."

"I've never been chased by a woman," said Jonstone a little wistfully. "What happened in the end?"

"I left Cairo between two days, fled away into the desert with some people just stepped out of the Bible, and never came back."

"Suppose she hadn't been willing to marry you and had had a voice like a dove?"

"Don't suppose. We are on a new quest."

"What is the Adirondacks?"

"We wouldn't think much of it in the South. It's a place where you are always cool and clean and can drink the nearest water. The trout don't eat mud and haven't got long white whiskers, and the deer are bigger than dogs, and you don't go to sleep at night. The night just comes and puts you to sleep. It's just like Bar Harbor—only a little more so in some ways and a little less so in others."