I said, “Naturally,” and he seemed glad of the chance to laugh again.

“Well, of course!  And her being away at school made it all the more so.  If we’d had her under our eye, here—­Well, we shouldn’t have had her under our eye if she had been here; or if we had, we shouldn’t have seen what was going on; at least I shouldn’t; maybe her mother would.  So it’s just as well it happened as it did happen, I guess.  We shouldn’t have been any the wiser if we’d known all about it.”  I joined him in his laugh at his paradox, and he began again.  “What’s that about being the unexpected that happens?  I guess what happens is what ought to have been expected.  We might have known when we let her go to a coeducational college that we were taking a risk of losing her; but we lost our other daughter that way, and she never went to any kind of college.  I guess we counted the chances before we let her go.  What’s the use?  Of course we did, and I remember saying to my wife, who’s more anxious than I am about most things—­women are, I guess—­that if the worst came to the worst, it might not be such a bad thing.  I always thought it wasn’t such an objectionable feature, in the coeducational system, if the young people did get acquainted under it, and maybe so well acquainted that they didn’t want to part enemies in the end.  I said to my wife that I didn’t see how, if a girl was going to get married, she could have a better basis than knowing the fellow through three or four years’ hard work together.  When you think of the sort of hit-or-miss affairs most marriages are that young people make after a few parties and picnics, coeducation as a preliminary to domestic happiness doesn’t seem a bad notion.”

“There’s something in what you say,” I assented.

“Of course there is,” my neighbor insisted.  “I couldn’t help laughing, though,” and he laughed, as if to show how helpless he had been, “at what my wife said.  She said she guessed if it came to that they would get to know more of each other’s looks than they did of their minds.  She had me there, but I don’t think my girl has made out so very poorly even as far as books are concerned.”

Upon this invitation to praise her, I ventured to say, “A young lady of Miss Talbert’s looks doesn’t need much help from books.”

I could see that what I had said pleased him to the core, though he put on a frown of disclaimer in replying, “I don’t know about her looks.  She’s a good girl, though, and that’s the main thing, I guess.”

“For her father, yes, but other people don’t mind her being pretty,” I persisted.  “My wife says when Miss Talbert comes out into the garden, the other flowers have no chance.”

“Good for Mrs. Temple!” my neighbor shouted, joyously giving himself away.

I have always noticed that when you praise a girl’s beauty to her father, though he makes a point of turning it off in the direction of her goodness, he likes so well to believe she is pretty that he cannot hold out against any persistence in the admirer of her beauty.  My neighbor now said with the effect of tasting a peculiar sweetness in my words, “I guess I shall have to tell my wife, that.”  Then he added, with a rush of hospitality, “Won’t you come in and tell her yourself?”