“It is a pretty accomplishment,” said Miss Campbell, “but I doubt if any American girl would have the patience to learn it.  Can you imagine, Billie, spending two hours arranging three lilies in a bowl to make them look as if they had grown there?”

“No, I can’t,” laughed Billie, “but I have spent two hours many times on my back under the ‘Comet’ trying to find a loose screw.”

“If I had a wife—­” here Nicholas remarked and paused because everybody laughed.

“Well, if you had one, what would you do with her?  Beat her?” asked Mr. Buxton.

“Do I look like a wife beater?” demanded Nicholas indignantly.  “No.  I was going to say I’d rather she would know about loose screws in machinery than how to arrange flowers.”

“You speak as if marriage was one long motor trip, my boy,” observed Mr. Campbell.

“And, surely,” put in Miss Campbell, “if the machinery broke down, you wouldn’t compel your wife to repair it?”

“I am afraid very few girls would be eligible for your wife, Mr. Grimm,” remarked Mme. Fontaine.

As for Billie, she said nothing at all, but glanced down at her plate, because Nicholas looked straight at her and then burst out with: 

“Don’t jump on me, everybody, with both feet.  I only meant that it’s a jolly fine girl who can—­er—­who—­knows—­”

He broke down in confusion.

“You mean that a young lady chauffeur would make an excellent wife?” laughed Mr. Campbell.

“Spare his blushes,” put in Reggie, and then the talk shifted to other subjects.

It is customary in Japan on the day of the Boys’ Festival to tell stories of the heroes of the country, and after dinner when they had gathered in the lantern-hung summer-house for coffee, Mme. Fontaine, urged by the girls, recounted an incident in the life of Yamato, or O’Osu, as he was then known.  He was the son of the Emperor Keiko, and when a mere slip of a boy was sent by his father to slay two fierce robbers who had been spreading terror through the country.  O’Osu gladly undertook the affair and since the outlaws were giants and he just a boy, he devised a cunning scheme to outwit the terrible brigands.  He was slender and small and his hair still long, so that in the gorgeous clothes of a dancing girl no one would ever have guessed he was a brave and reckless young prince.

One night when the robbers were feasting in their cave after pillaging the country for miles around, the beautiful dancing girl appeared before them like a vision.  She charmed them with her songs and dances and then suddenly she whipped out a sharp sword and slew the nearest robber.  As the other fled terror-stricken to the entrance of the cave, she thrust him in the back and he fell to the ground.

“‘Pause, oh Prince, for prince thou surely art,’ he gasped.  ’But why hast thou done this deed?’

“And the prince, standing over him with the dripping sword, said: