"Car's outside. We'll just drop Lillian at the house, Doctor, and you can pick up your bathing-suit. We heard part of your lecture, by the way. How you get by the Methodists is still a mystery to me.
"I wish he would get into trouble, Scott," said Lillian as they left the building. "I wish he wouldn't talk to those fat-faced boys as if they were intelligent beings. You cheapen yourself, Godfrey. It makes me a little ashamed."
"I was rather rambling on to-day. I'm sorry you happened along. There's a fellow in that lot, Tod Miller, who isn't slow, and he excites me to controversy."
"All the same," murmured his wife, "it's hardly dignified to think aloud in such company. It's in rather bad taste."
"Thank you for the tip, Lillian. I won't do it again."
It took Scott only twenty minutes to get out to the lake. He drew up at the bit of beach St. Peter had bought for himself years before; a little triangle of sand running out into the water, with a bath-house and seven shaggy pine-trees on it. Scott had to fuss with the car, and the Professor was undressed and in the water before him.
When McGregor was ready to go in, his father-in-law was some distance out, swimming with an over-arm stroke, his head and shoulders well out of the water. He wore on his head a rubber visor of a kind he always brought home from France in great numbers. This one was vermilion, and was like a continuation of his flesh—his arms and back were burned a deep terra-cotta from a summer in the lake. His head and powerful reaching arms made a strong red pattern against the purple blue of the water. The visor was picturesque—his head looked sheathed and small and intensely alive, like the heads of the warriors on the Parthenon frieze in their tight, archaic helmets.
By five o'clock St. Peter and McGregor were dressed and lying on the sand, their overcoats wrapped about them, smoking. Suddenly Scott began to chuckle.
"Oh, Professor, you know your English friend, Sir Edgar Spilling? The day after I met him at your house, he came up to my office at the Herald to get some facts you'd been too modest to give him. When he was leaving he stood and looked at one of these motto cards I have over my desk, DON'T KNOCK, and said: 'May I ask why you don't have that notice on the outside of your door? I didn't observe any other way of getting in.' They never get wise, do they? He really went out to see Marsellus' place—seemed interested. Doctor, are you going to let them call that place after Tom?"
"My dear boy, how can I prevent it?"