"There you are, then. Remains only for us to tell others how to do it; to found the Post-Graduate School of W. B. It's the one thing needful in a world of educational advantage; a world in which everything but the gentle art of being happy, though married, is taught by the postman. We have solved all the other problems, but there has been no renaissance in the art of matrimony. Think of the ten thousand divorces granted in a single state last year! My dear Isobel, we mustn't lose a day—an hour—a minute!"
She pretended to take him seriously.
"I don't know why we shouldn't do it, I'm sure," she mused. "They teach everything by mail nowadays. But who is going to die and leave us the endowment to start with?"
"That's the artistic beauty of the mail scheme," said Jimaboy, enthusiastically. "It doesn't require capitalizing; no buildings, no campus, no football team, no expensive university plant; nothing but an inspiration, a serviceable typewriter, and a little old postman to blow his whistle at the door."
"And the specialty," added Isobel, "though some of them don't seem to trouble themselves much about that. Oh, yes; and the advertising; that is where the endowment comes in, isn't it?"
But Jimaboy would not admit the obstacle.
"That is one of the things that grow by what they are fed upon: your ad. brings in the money, and then the money buys more ad. Now, there's Blicker, of the Woman's Uplift; he still owes us for that last story—we take it out in advertising space. Also Dormus, of the Home World, and Amory, of the Storylovers—same boat—more advertising space. Then the Times hasn't paid for that string of space-fillers on 'The Lovers of All Nations.' The Times has a job office, and we could take that out in prospectuses and application blanks."
By this time the situation was entirely saved and Isobel's eyes were dancing.
"Wouldn't it be glorious?" she murmured. "Think of the precious, precious letters we'd get; real letters like some of those pretended ones in Mr. Blicker's correspondence column. And we wouldn't tell them what the 'W. B.' meant until after they'd finished the course, and then we'd send them the degree of 'Master of Wedded Bliss,' and write it out in the diploma."
Jimaboy sat back in his chair and laughed uproariously. The most confirmed sentimentalist may have a saving sense of humor. Indeed, it is likely to go hard with him in the experimental years, if he has it not.