Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/95

 "Usually. Together. The Graces. Otherwise, what becomes of the Group?"

"Well, I hope there'll be enough fellows to look after the stove and the pump—and them. I'm not much good at that last."

"No?"

"There's a knack about it—a technique—that I don't seem to possess. Nor do I seem greatly prompted to learn it."

"Of course, there is no more reason for assuming that every man will make a good lover than that every woman will make a good mother or a good housekeeper."

"Or that every adult male will make a good citizen, desiring the general welfare and bestirring himself to contribute his own share to it. I don't feel that I'm an especially creditable one."

"So it runs. We ground our general life on theories, and then the facts come up and slap us in the face." Randolph rose and relieved the basswood of the first garments. "Are you about ready for that final dip?"

Cope made his last plunge and returned red and shivering to use the two handkerchiefs.

"Well, we have thirty minutes," said Randolph, as they resumed their march. On the one hand the ragged line of dunes with their draping, dense or slight, of pines, lindens and oaks; on the other the unruffled expanse of blue, spreading toward a horizon even less determinate than before.

"No, I'm not at all apt," said Cope, returning to