“Clara says practically the same.”  Pete wrinkled his forehead in perplexity.  “It took my breath away.  How do you account for it?”

“Oh, that’s all right,” Honey answered. stopping to dash the sweat from his forehead, “I should say it was just a matter of their getting over their foolishness.  I suppose all young married women have it — that instinct to monopolize their husbands.  And when you think it over, we do sort of give them the impression while we’re courting them that they are the whole cheese.  But that isn’t all.  They’ve come to their senses on some other matters.  I think, for instance, they’re beginning to get our point of view on this flying proposition.  Lulu hasn’t hinted that she’d like to fly for three months.  She’s never been so contented since, we captured them.  To do her justice, though, she always saw, when I pointed it out to her, that flying was foolish, besides being dangerous.”

“Well,” Ralph said, “what between holding them down from the clouds and keeping them away from the, New Camp, managing them has been some job.  But I guess you’re right, Honey.  I think they’re reconciled now to their lot.  If I do say it as shouldn’t, Peachy seems like a regular woman nowadays.  She’s braced up in fine style in the last two months.  Her color is much better; her spirits are high.  When I get home at night, she doesn’t want to go out at all.  If I say that I’m going to the Clubhouse, she never raises a yip.  In fact, she seems too tired to care.  She’s always ready now to turn in when I do.  For months and months, you know, she sat up reading until all hours of the night and morning.  But now she falls asleep like a child.”

“Then she’s gotten over that insomnia?” Pete asked this casually and he did not look at Ralph.

“Entirely,” Ralph replied briefly, and in his turn he did not look at Pete.  “She’s a perfectly healthy woman now.  She gets her three squares every day and her twelve hours every night — regular.  I never saw such an improvement in a woman.”

“Well, when it comes to sleeping,” Pete said, “I don’t believe she’s got anything on Clara.  I often find her dead to the world when I get home at night.  I jolly her about that — for she has always thought going to bed early indicated lack of temperament.  And as for teasing to be allowed to fly, or to be taken out swimming, or to call on any of you, or to let her tag me here — why, that’s all stopped short.  She keeps dozing off all the evening.  Sometimes in the midst of a sentence, she’ll begin to nod.  Never saw her looking so well, though.”

“Chiquita, on the contrary, isn’t sleeping as much as she did,” Frank said.  “She’s more active, though — physically, I mean.  She’s rejoicing at present over the fact that she’s lost twenty-five, pounds in the last three months.  She said last night that she hadn’t been so slim since she was a girl.”

“Twenty-five pounds!” exclaimed Honey.  “That’s a good deal to lose.  How the hell — how do you explain it!”