an old ignoramus."

And this from a woman who actively glories in not knowing how many "r's"
there are in "harassed."

She nestled up to me. "We're not going abroad in August, are we?"

"What?" I cried, "leave the English country during the only part of the
year that is not 'deformed with dripping rains or withered by a frost'?
Certainly not."

"But we did last year, and the year before."

"Pure accident. The year before, Susan was recovering from the measles
and you had some pretty frocks which you thought would look lovely at
Dinard. And last year you also had some frocks and insisted that
Houlgate was the only place where Susan could avoid being stricken down
by scarlet-fever."

"Anyhow," said my wife, "we're not going away this year, for I've fixed
up with Doria and Adrian to spend August at Northlands."

"Why didn't you tell me so at once? Why did you ask me whether we were
going away?"

"Because I knew we weren't," she answered.

In putting two questions at the same time, I blundered. The first was a
poser and might have elicited some interesting revelation of feminine
mental process. In forlorn hope I repeated it.