About eighteen.
They were Dr. Big Bill Petticoat and his bride, Warble.
They had been married and had spent their honeymoon in riotous loving.
It had been transforming. Warble had been frightened to discover how hungry she could be even on a wedding trip.
Bill had mused to himself; what's the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? One honeymoon. And now they had reached their home town. People were not altogether new to Warble. She had seen them before. But these were her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn—and, they didn't seem to need it.
They distressed her. They were so smart. She had always held that there is no style in America, no chic effects out of Paris.
But here on the terrace of the simple little hewn stone station were hordes of men and women who seemed to be, mentally, morally and physically, literally butterflies.
“Isn't there any way of waking them up?” she begged of Petticoat, grabbing his arm and shaking him.
“These guys? Wake 'em up? What for? They're happy.”
“But they're so smug—no, that isn't what I mean. They're so stick-in-the-mud.”