"Not yet. I wanted to consult you first, of course."
Bill liked that. It was another way of saying that she was still his secretary.
"You've got a whole beanful of ideas, haven't you?" he exclaimed, in admiration. "Well, I'm for this one, strong!"
Mary breathed a little more deeply. It seemed as if she had already removed herself a step further from Mrs. Rokeby-Jones and other perils of the city.
"I'm glad you like it," she said.
"Like it! Why, man alive—I mean little girl—well, anyhow, it's just the stunt we're going to pull off."
"It's not really a stunt," Mary reminded him. "It's not original at all. We do it simply because it is the right thing to do. Everybody of any account has a yacht, and now is the time for yachting."
"Now, don't you go crabbing your own stuff," said Bill. "This thing is a great invention, Secretary Norcross, and you get all the credit. I wouldn't have thought of it in a billion years. Now, what's your idea about this yacht? Do we want a little one or a whale? Where do we go? When? And who's going along?"
"Well, I don't know much about yachts," confessed Mary. "But it seems to me that a medium-sized one would do. We're not going across the ocean, you know."
"We might," declared Bill, hopefully—"we might start that trip around the world. I'm supposed to be on my way to Australia, you know, studying crustaceans."