t notion that the
reason why Judge Carter and his wife were childless was because they had
not yet gotten around to Doing It. He made no attempt to correlate this
oddity with its opposite in Jake Caslow's ladies of the night who seemed
to go on their merry way without conceiving.

He remembered the joking parry-and-thrust of that midnight talk between
Tim Fisher and Janet Bagley but it made no sense to him still. But as he
pondered the multitude of puzzlements, some of the answers fell partly
into place just as some of the matching pieces of a jigsaw puzzle may lie
close to one another when they are dumped out of the box. Very dimly
James began to realize that this sort of thing was not New, but to the
contrary it had been going on for a long, long time. So long in fact that
neither Tim Fisher nor Janet Bagley had found it necessary to state
desire and raise objection respectively in simple clear sentences
containing subject, verb, and object. This much came to him and it
bothered him even more, now that he understood that they were bandying
their meanings lightly over a subject so vital, so important, so--so
completely personal.

Then, in that oddly irrational corner of his brain that neither knowledge
nor information had been adequate to rationalize nor had experience
arrived to supply the explanation, James Holden's limited but growing
comprehension arrived at a conclusion that was reasonable within its
limited framework. Judge Carter and his wife occupied separate bedrooms
and had therefore never Done It. Conversely, Tim and Janet Fisher from
their midnight discussion obviously Knew What It Was All About. James
wondered whether they had Done It yet, and he also wondered whether he
could tell by listening to their discussions and conversations now that
they'd been married at least long enough to have Tried It.

With a brand new and very interesting subject to study, James lost
interest in the program of concentrated research. James Holden found that
all he had to do to arrange a trip to Shipmont was to state his desire to
go and the length of his visit. The judge deemed both reasonable, Mrs.
Carter packed James a bag, and off he went.

* * * * *

The house on Martin's Hill was about the same, with some improvement such
as a coat of paint and some needed repair work. The grounds had been
worked over, but it was going to take a number of years of concentrated
gardening to de-weed the