“Adventure!  It’s a cruel disappointment—­I was all ready for them.”

“Harriet,” I said, “adventure is just what we make it.  And aren’t we to have the Scotch Preacher and his wife?”

“But I’ve got such a good dinner.”

“Well,” I said, “there are no two ways about it:  it must be eaten!  You may depend upon me to do my duty.”

“We’ll have to send out into the highways and compel them to come in,” said Harriet ruefully.

I had several choice observations I should have liked to make upon this problem, but Harriet was plainly not listening; she sat with her eyes fixed reflectively on the coffeepot.  I watched her for a moment, then I remarked: 

“There aren’t any.”

“David,” she exclaimed, “how did you know what I was thinking about?”

“I merely wanted to show you,” I said, “that my genius is not properly appreciated in my own household.  You thought of highways, didn’t you?  Then you thought of the poor; especially the poor on Christmas day; then of Mrs. Heney, who isn’t poor any more, having married John Daniels; and then I said, ‘There aren’t any.’”

Harriet laughed.

“It has come to a pretty pass,” she said “when there are no poor people to invite to dinner on Christmas day.”

“It’s a tragedy, I’ll admit,” I said, “but let’s be logical about it.”

“I am willing,” said Harriet, “to be as logical as you like.”

“Then,” I said, “having no poor to invite to dinner we must necessarily try the rich.  That’s logical, isn’t it?”

“Who?” asked Harriet, which is just like a woman.  Whenever you get a good healthy argument started with her, she will suddenly short-circuit it, and want to know if you mean Mr. Smith, or Joe Perkins’s boys, which I maintain is not logical.

“Well, there are the Starkweathers,” I said.

“David!”

“They’re rich, aren’t they?”

“Yes, but you know how they live—­what dinners they have—­and besides, they probably have a houseful of company.”

“Weren’t you telling me the other day how many people who were really suffering were too proud to let anyone know about it?  Weren’t you advising the necessity of getting acquainted with people and finding out—­tactfully, of course—­you made a point of tact—­what the trouble was?”

“But I was talking of poor people.”

“Why shouldn’t a rule that is good for poor people be equally as good for rich people?  Aren’t they proud?”

“Oh, you can argue,” observed Harriet.

“And I can act, too,” I said.  “I am now going over to invite the Starkweathers.  I heard a rumor that their cook has left them and I expect to find them starving in their parlour.  Of course they’ll be very haughty and proud, but I’ll be tactful, and when I go away I’ll casually leave a diamond tiara in the front hall.”

“What is the matter with you this morning?”