rare outbursts of frankness in regard to the other sex were
the more startling because they contrasted so sharply with his normal
attitude of lordly understanding and contempt. "I've been a good manager
and I'm not saying that I haven't had my successes with them. But as
I look back upon them now, I realize I followed my intuitions, not my
reason. I've done what I've done without knowing why. I have to feel
my way still. I can't account for the change that's come over them. For
four years now they've been at us to let their wings grow again. And for
four years we've been saying no in every possible tone of voice and with
every possible inflection. I've had no idea that Peachy would ever get
over it. My God, you fellows have no idea what I've been through with
her in regard to this question of flying. Why, one night three months
ago, she had an awful attack of hysteria because I told her I'd have to
cut Angela's wings as soon as she was grown-up."

"Well, what did she expect?" Honey asked.

"That I'd let her keep them--that I'd let her fly the way Peachy did!
Or--what do you suppose she suggested?--that I cut them off now."

"Well, what was her idea in that?" Billy's tone was the acme of
perplexity.

"That as long as I wouldn't let her keep them after she had attained her
growth, she might as well not have them at all."

Billy laughed. "That's a woman's reasoning all right, all right. Why,
it would destroy half Angela's charm in my eyes. That little fluttering
flight of hers, half on the ground, half in the air, is so lovely, so
engaging, so endearing----. But of course letting her fly high would
be--."

"Absurd," Ralph interrupted.

"Dangerous," Honey interpolated.

"Unwomanly," Pete added.

"Immodest," Billy concluded.

"Well, thank God it's all over," Ralph went on. "But, as I say, I give
up guessing what's changed her, unless it's the principle that constant
dropping wears away the stone. Oscar Wilde had the answer. They're
sphinxes without secrets. They do anything that occurs to them and for
no particular reason. I get along with, them only by laying down the law
and holding them to it. And I reckon they've got that idea firmly fixed
in their minds now--that they're to stay where we put them."

Honey wriggled as if in discomfort. "Seems to me, Ralph, you take a
pretty cold-blooded view of the situation. I guess I don't go very far
with you. Not that I pretend to understand women. I don't. My system
w