"Why can't you put clever things like that into your stories, Jimmy, dear?"
"As if I didn't!" he retorted. "But don't step on my idea and squash it while it's in the soft-shell-crab stage. As I said, I was thinking: there is just one thing we can give the world odds on and beat it out of sight. And that thing is our long suit—our specialty."
"But you said you had an idea," said Isobel, whose private specialty was singleness of purpose.
"Oh—yes," said Jimaboy. Then he smote hard upon the anvil and forged one on the spur of the moment. "Suppose we call it The Post-Graduate School of W. B., Professor James Augustus Jimaboy, principal; Mrs. Isobel Jimaboy, assistant principal. How would that sound?"
"It would sound like the steam siren on the planing mill. But what is the 'W. B.'?"
"'Wedded Bliss,' of course. Here is the way it figures out. We've been married three years, and—"
"Three years, five months and fourteen days," she corrected.
"Excellent! That accuracy of yours would be worth a fortune on the faculty. But let me finish—during these three years, five months and fourteen days we have fought, bled and died on the literary battle-field; dined on bath-mitts and café hydraulique, walked past the opera-house entrance when our favorite play was on, and all that. But tell me, throb of my heart, have we ever gone shy on bliss?"
She met him half-way. It was the spirit in which they had faced the bill collector since the beginning of the period of leanness.
"Never, Jimmy, dear; not even hardly ever."