by Rufus King
“We’ll look out for traces as we go along,” the trooper said gloomily.
They were standing on the pool’s brink at the base of the falls. The erratic appearance of two mermaids and four mermen did little toward soothing the faintish feelings still lingering in Oscar’s head.
“Well,” said Duveen wetly, “are you or are you not going to throw me a rope?”
It was entirely due to a purse heavily subscribed to by both Mr. Wilkins and Duveen, and presented that evening at the Duveen home, that the trooper became a richer if not a wiser man. For both of the two heavy subscribers had wisely decided that, unless they wanted to be confined for a couple of nuts, there was nothing legal that they could do to Ramier for his cavalier treatment of their again properly spaced atoms. The purse, viewed as a reward for either life-saving or what have you, forefended all embarrassing questions.
In spite of his vigorous denials, Drusilla held her father rigidly to the blessing he had bestowed upon her betrothal. Even though he had done it in haste, as she pointed out, he would have lots of leisure in which to repent. Eventually he became reconciled—if not as a father-in-law, at least as a grandfather.
They are living now, Drusilla and Ramier, in a quiet little home in the West. Science—experiments—all the latest devices for efficiency which, before their astonishing adventure, they had imagined would form an integral part of the equipment of their home, are kept severely away. Nothing more modern or efficient than an oil stove will Drusilla permit to enter their house. And Ramier is glad. He has come from his experience a better and a happier man.
He writes, in a letter that I have just received from him:
Radios—the conquest of the air—the conquest of the sea—are as nothing when compared with the conquest of the heart of the woman whom you love. I have given up science. I am no longer thrilled by the ability to bring by wireless the human voice to my hearth from the furthermost corners of the earth. I am tired of the music, the speeches, the prophecies of further scientific triumphs that are to make the whole world one, and that invade the privacy of my home through the ether. I prefer, instead, to shut my door and be assured that the rest of the world shall be kept outside; that my hearth is Drusilla’s and mine alone—alone with our love and with the deeper, greater love of our two children, who shall be led not along the path their parents followed, but along the kindlier and more real one of simplicity and faith.
RAMIER.
