"I suppose," said Jerry, pulling at his pipe thoughtfully, "we never will get the Japanese point of view anent the question of morals."
"It's the shape of their eyes. They see things slant-wise," suggested Jinx brilliantly.
"But Sunny's eyes, as I recall them," protested Bobs, "were not slanting, and she had their point of view. You'll recall how the Proff had much ado to prevent her taking her own quaint bath in our 'lake' in beauty unadorned."
A burst of laughter broke forth here.
"Did he now? He never told me anything about that."
"Didn't tell me either, but I heard him. He explained to Sunny in the most fatherly way the whole question of morals from the day of Adam down, and she got him so tangled up and ashamed of himself that he didn't know where he was at. However, as I recall it, he must have won out in the contention, for you'll recall how she voiced such scathing and contemptuous criticism later on the public bathers of Japan, whom she said were 'igrant and nod god nize Americazan manner and wear dress cover hees body ad those bath.'"
"Ah, Sunny was a darling kid, take it from me. Just as innocent and sweet as a new-born babe." This was Jinx's sentimental contribution, and no voice arose to question his verdict.
So it will be perceived that her friends, upon the rare occasions when she was recalled to memory, still held her in loving, if humorous regard, and it was the custom of Jerry to end the reminiscences of Sunny with a big sigh and a dumping of the ash from his pipe, as he dismissed the subject with:
"Well, well, I suppose she's the Empress of Japan by now."
All of them were occupied with the concerns and careers that were of paramount importance to them. Monty, though but in his twenty-first year, an Intern at Bellevue; Bobs, star reporter on the Comet; Jinx, overwhelmingly rich, the melancholy and unwilling magnet of all aspiring mothers-in-law; Jerry, an outlaw from the house of Hammond, though his engagement to Miss Falconer bade fair to reinstate him in his parents' affections. He was doggedly following that star of which he had once told Sunny. Eight hours per day in an architect's office, and four or six hours in his own studio, was the sum of the work of Jerry. He "lived in the clouds," according to his people; but all the great deeds of the world, and all of the masterpieces penned or painted by the hand of man, Jerry knew were the creations of dreamers—the "cloud livers." So he took no umbrage at the taunt, and kept on reaching after what he had once told Sunny was that Jade of fortune—Beauty.