“What I desire,” she said, ignoring the remonstrances of the family, “is a chance to make mistakes.  Three or four nice men have thought they were in love with me, and I wouldn’t take anything for the—­experience.  Or,” she added innocently, “for the chances that some day three or four more agreeable young men may think they are in love with me.  One learns by making mistakes—­very pleasantly.”

Her family sat in an affectionately earnest row and adjured her—­four married sisters, four blissful brothers-in-law, her attractive stepmother, her father.  She shook her pretty head and continued sewing on the costume she was to wear at the Oyster Bay Venetian Fete and Go-cart Fair.

“No,” she said, threading her needle and deftly sewing a shining, silvery scale onto the mermaid’s dress lying across her knees, “I’ll take my chances with men.  It’s better fun to love a man not intended for me, and make him love me, and live happily and defiantly ever after, than to have a horrid old machine settle you for life.”

“But you are wasting time, dear,” explained her stepmother gently.

“Oh, no, I’m not.  I’ve been engaged three times and I’ve enjoyed it immensely.  That isn’t wasting time, is it?  And it’s such fun!  He thinks he’s in love and you think you’re in love, and you have such an agreeable time together until you find out that you’re spoons on somebody else.  And then you find out you’re mistaken and you say you always want him for a friend, and you presently begin all over again with a perfectly new man——­”

“Flavilla!”

“Yes, Pa-pah.”

“Are you utterly demoralized!”

“Demoralized?  Why?  Everybody behaved as I do before you and William invented your horrid machine.  Everybody in the world married at hazard, after being engaged to various interesting young men.  And I’m not demoralized; I’m only old-fashioned enough to take chances.  Please let me.”

The family regarded her sadly.  In their amalgamated happiness they deplored her reluctance to enter where perfect bliss was guaranteed.

Her choice of role and costume for the Seawanhaka Club water tableaux they also disapproved of; for she had chosen to represent a character now superfluous and out of date—­the Lorelei who lured Teutonic yachtsmen to destruction with her singing some centuries ago.  And that, in these times, was ridiculous, because, fortified by a visit to the nearest Destyn-Carr machine, no weak-minded young sailorman would care what a Lorelei might do; and she could sing her pretty head off and comb herself bald before any Destyn-Carr inoculated mariner would be lured overboard.

But Flavilla obstinately insisted on her scaled and fish-tailed costume.  When her turn came, a spot-light on the clubhouse was to illuminate the float and reveal her, combing her golden hair with a golden comb and singing away like the Musical Arts.

“And,” she thought secretly, “if there remains upon this machine-made earth one young man worth my kind consideration, it wouldn’t surprise me very much if he took a header off the Yacht Club wharf and requested me to be his.  And I’d be very likely to listen to his suggestion.”