"What, for instance?"

"Why, Miss X and my life in Lycurgus, and what we'd be up against in case we did go away this way."

"Yes."

"And ... well ... and then I couldn't just tell her then—not that day, anyhow."

"Well, when did you tell her then?"

"Well, I told her not to cry any more—that I thought maybe it would be all right if she gave me twenty-four hours more to think things all out—that maybe we'd be able to settle on something."

"And then?"

"Well, then she said after a while that she didn't care for Grass Lake. She wished we would go away from there."

"She did?"

"Yes. And then we got out the maps again and I asked a fellow at the hotel there if he knew about the lakes up there. And he said of all the lakes around there Big Bittern was the most beautiful. I had seen it once, and I told Roberta about it and what the man said, and then she asked why didn't we go there."