"I can't," said the Skeptic. "I never noticed how it rippled in the moonlight. The big porch is my favourite haunt at the Farm. The smoking is good there—keeps away the midges."
"Midges!" Dahlia gave a little shriek. "There aren't any midges in that part of the country."
"There are some kinds of little, annoying insects that come around in the evening, then," persisted the Skeptic, "just when people want to settle down and have themselves to themselves. The Philosopher was always more annoyed by them than I. He has a sensitive skin."
Once started on this sort of allusive nonsense it was difficult for us to head off the Skeptic. But presently, noting the Professor's kindly face assuming a puzzled expression as he watched his wife's kittenish demeanour, the Skeptic desisted. It did not seem necessary for him to demonstrate to us that, quite as of old, he could attract Dahlia to his side and keep her there. Before the evening was over he found himself occupied—also quite as of old—with keeping out of her way. Altogether, it was certainly not Dahlia's fault if the Professor did not gain the impression that both the Skeptic and the Philosopher were rejected suitors of her own.
When they had gone, and the door had closed upon the last of the bride's backward looks at our two men, the Skeptic dropped into a chair.
"Hepatica, will you kindly mix a few drops of soothing syrup for me?" he requested.
But the Philosopher fell to marching up and down, his hands in his pockets, and a deeper gloom on his brow than we had ever seen there. Although a decade the Philosopher's elder, the Professor had long shared bachelor quarters with him in past days; it had been only within a year or two that the necessities of their occupations had caused them to separate.
"Why did I ever let him go off by himself?" the Philosopher muttered remorsefully. "Why didn't I keep an eye on him?"
"It would have made no difference," the Skeptic offered dismally as consolation. "'Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad!' You couldn't have prevented his madness."
"I could have seen to it that such deadly instruments as marriage licences and irresponsible clergymen were kept out of his way," groaned the Philosopher.