Nick’s rejoinder, which was no reply, edified me to the limit of edification.
“She says they wash,” he seriously observed.
My jaw dropped, for only to the wise is a word sufficient. But then I howled anew.
“Of course they wash, you cracked walnut! That’s the killing part of it, because she doesn’t save anything by her famous system—she has to keep so many of them going.”
“Why didn’t you ever marry her?” continued Nick inconsequently.
“I never thought of it, for one thing. Neither did she, for another. If she had, she scarcely would have failed to mention it. And neither of us could afford it, for a third. Want any more reasons? I can think them up as fast as you can ask them.”
“Herb, you’re an ass,” commented Nick without forms. “But it’s never too late to mend. We’ll build a Norwegian cottage in the lake orchard at Island Pond, and you can both paint apple trees and live happily ever after.”
“Thanks,” said I.
IV
It was great fun showing Norway to Zephine. They went very well together. Norway is the least conventional of countries, where you have the most room in which to swing cats. There is nothing to look at but Norway itself, and you aren’t overrun by fellow bearers of the red book. It doesn’t distress me a bit that the mountains are only half as high as the Swiss ones. They are twice as effective when they climb sheer out of still green fiords. That is the great point about Norway, of course—the water, and those fingers of the sea feeling for leagues among the mountains. And the peasants are quite the most perfect among peasants, if a shade too honest.