The two men were Boyd Westover and Jack Towns.
The two women were Margaret Conway and Millicent Danvers.
The conversations in the two porches were utterly unlike in substance, in tone and in effect. Nevertheless they were not unrelated—in part at least.
Jack Towns had come to give an account of his stewardship, but Westover, with his habitual indifference to petty details, insisted upon it that the report should be broadly general.
"When a man has arranged a matter," he said, "involving nine seven times over, I like him to say sixty-three at the outset, instead of seven times nine. I hate to multiply and divide and add and subtract."
"Why the deuce are you doing it, then?" demanded Jack.
"As how?"
"Why by making the wholly needless and utterly idle computation that seven times nine is sixty-three. Why didn't you just say you liked totals rather than the factors producing them?"
"I suppose it is because I never studied law and therefore haven't a well ordered mind."
"And I don't suppose anything of the sort. I suppose it's because your mind is fascinated with some other subject—and by the way she really is charming—so that it wearies you to think of anything else. Perhaps you'll feel otherwise when you hear what I have to tell you. Are you ready to listen?"