He walked right into it with the never-failing “Why?”

“Just so.  Call one Pourquoi and the other N’est-ce-pas.  They do good team work in both the spirit and the letter. Pourquoi, Worth, is your favorite word in French.  Need I add that it means ‘why’?  And N’est-ce-pas—­well, Watts would say N’est-ce-pas meant ‘ain’t it’? and more flexible translators find it to mean anything they are seeking to persuade you is true.  Pourquoi is the inquirer and N’est-ce-pas the universalist.  I trust Watts will give this his endorsement.”

“I’ll ask him,” gravely replied Worth, and sought to accustom the puppies to their new names with chanting—­Poor Qua—­Nessa Pa.  The chant grew so melancholy that the puppies subsided; oppressed, overpowered, perhaps, with the sense of being anything as large and terrible as inquirer and universalist.

But Worth was too true a son of the army to leave a brooding damsel long alone in the corner.  “You seen the new cow?” was his friendly approach.

“Why, I don’t believe I have,” she confessed.

“I s’pose you’ve seen the chickens?” he asked, a trifle condescendingly.

Ann shamefacedly confessed that she had not as yet seen the chickens.

He took a step backward for the weighty, crushing:  “Well, you’ve seen the horses, haven’t you?”

“Aunt Kate—­Aunt Kate!” he called peremptorily, as Ann humbly shook her head, “Miss Ann’s not seen the cow—­or the, chickens—­nor the horses!”

“Isn’t it scandalous?” agreed Kate.  “It shows what sort of hostess I am, doesn’t it?  But you see, Worth, I thought as long as you were coming so soon you could do the honors of the stables.  I think it’s always a little more satisfactory to have a man do those things.”

“I’ll take you now,” announced Worth, in manner which brooked neither delay nor gratitude.

And so the girl and the little boy and the two puppies, the joy of motion freeing them from the sad weight of inquirer and universalist, started across the lawn for the stables.  Pourquoi caught at Ann’s dress and she had to be manfully rescued by Worth.  And no sooner had the inquirer been loosened from one side than the universalist was firmly fastened to the other and the rescue must be enacted all over again, amid considerable confusion and laughter.  Ann’s laugh was borne to Katie on a wave of the spring—­just the laugh of a girl playing with a boy and his dogs.

It was a whole hour later, and as Kate was starting out for golf she saw Ann and Worth sitting on the sandpile, a tired inquirer and very weary universalist asleep at their feet.  Ann was picking sand up in her hands and letting it sift through.  Worth was digging with masculine vigor.  Kate passed close enough to hear Ann’s, “Well, once upon a time—­”