Page:My Dear Cornelia (1924).pdf/240

 keep the State of California educationally well in the lead of Massachusetts. I spoke on three successive mornings, expanding an ancient club-paper into a three-day serial by presenting its platitudes more slowly and impressively than club custom permits. However, we are not now concerned with that.

As I left the auditorium platform on the third morning, and, in the anteroom, was receiving my fee, Dorothy and Oliver Junior, bareheaded and browned by southern sunshine, burst in. "Hello!" cried Oliver, "car's outside. This your dunnage?" Dorothy, on the impulse of the moment, kissed me, which made me think well of myself, and even better of her than ever, for twenty-four hours afterwards. I was wondering how Oliver felt about driving, when Dorothy jumped in and, taking the wheel, sent me to the rear seat with her brother.

We worked our way cautiously out of the congested somnolent city, which expands its amorphous immensity while it sleeps. Then the efficient young pilot whirled us along at high speed over the four- or five-hour trip, through orange groves and highways lined with palms, by sea and sandy waste, through pines and pale-gold grass, past San Juan