"He's negative and doesn't count," I explained. "You're positive."
That put him in a good humour again and he went off for a shower. I turned to Ferd.
"I believe I've got it," I said—"I'll have a fight with Day the morning of the picnic and I'll not be there when he gets home. I've done it before. Then, when I do go home, he'll be so glad to see me he'll not ask any questions. He'll think I've been off sulking."
"Good girl!" said Ferd.
"Only you must get home by ten o'clock—that's positive. By eleven he'd be telephoning the police."
"Sure I will! We'll all have to get home at reasonable hours."
"And—I'm a wretch, Ferd. He's so fond of me!"
"That's no particular virtue in him. I'm fond of you—and that's mild, Fan; but what's a virtue in Day is a weakness in me, I dare say."
"It's an indiscretion," I said, and got up. Enough is a sufficiency, as somebody said one day, and I did not allow even Ferd to go too far.
Annette and Jane and Catherine were all crazy about it. Annette was the luckiest, because Charles was going for a fishing trip, and her time was her own. And Ferd's idea turned out to be perfectly bully when the eight of us got together that evening and talked it over while the husbands were shooting crap in the grill room.