“Here you are all connected by marriage, and there they are all connected by divorce.”

“That’s true!” he cried, “that’s very true. I met the most embarrassingly cater-cornered families.”

“Oh, they weren’t embarrassed!” I interjected.

“No, but I was,” said John.

“And you told me you weren’t innocent!” I exclaimed. “They are going to institute a divorce march,” I continued. “‘Lohengrin’ or ‘Midsummer-Night’s Dream’ played backward. They have not settled which it is to be taught in the nursery with the other kindergarten melodies.”

He was still unsuspectingly diverted; and we walked along until we turned in the direction of my boarding-house.

“Did you ever notice,” I now said, “what a perpetual allegory ‘Midsummer-Night’s Dream’ contains?”

“I thought it was just a fairy sort of thing.”

“Yes, but when a great poet sets his hand to a fairy sort of thing, you get—well, you get poor Titania.”

“She fell in love with a jackass,” he remarked. “Puck bewitched her.”