"They certainly are nice people," I assented to my wife's observation,
using the colloquial phrase with a consciousness that it was anything
but "nice" English, "and I'll bet that their three children are better
brought up than most of____"

"_Two_ children," corrected my wife.

"Three, he told me."

"My dear, she said there were _two_."

"He said three."

"You've simply forgotten. I'm _sure_ she told me they had only two__a
boy and a girl."

"Well, I didn't enter into particulars."

"No, dear, and you couldn't have understood him. Two children."

"All right," I said; but I did not think it was all right. As a
near_sighted man learns by enforced observation to recognize persons
at a distance when the face is not visible to the normal eye, so the
man with a bad memory learns, almost unconsciously, to listen
carefully and report accurately. My memory is bad; but I had not had
time to forget that Mr. Brewster Brede had told me that afternoon that
he had three children, at present left in the care of his
mother_in_law, while he and Mrs. Brede took their summer vacation.

"Two children," repeated my wife; "and they are staying with his aunt
Jenny."

"He told me with his mother_in_law," I put in. My wife looked at me
with a serious expression. Men may not remember much of what they are
told about children; but any man knows the difference between an aunt
and a mother_in_law.

"But don't you think they're nice people?" asked my wife.

"Oh, certainly," I replied. "Only they seem to be a little mixed up
about their children."

"That isn't a nice thing to say," returned my wife. I could not deny
it.

       *       *       *       *       *

And yet, the next morning, when the Bredes came down and seated
themselves opposite us at table, beaming and smiling in their natural,
pleasant, well_bred fashion, I knew, to a social certainty, that they
were "nice" people. He was a fine_looking fellow in his neat
tennis_flannels, slim, graceful, twenty_eight or thirty years old,
with a Frenchy pointed beard. She was "nice" in all her pretty
clothes, and she herself was pretty with that type of prettiness which
outwears most other types__the prettiness that lies in a rounded
figure, a dusky skin, plump, rosy cheeks, white teeth and black eyes.
She might have been twenty_five; you guessed that she was prettier
than she was at twenty, and that she would be prettier still at forty.

And nice people were all we wanted to make us happy in Mr. Jacobus's
summer boarding_house on top of Orange Mountain. For a week we had
come down to breakfast each morning, wondering why we wasted the
precious days of idleness with the company gathered around the Jacobus
board. What joy of human companionship was to be had out of Mrs. Tabb
and Miss Hoogencamp, the two middle_aged gossips from Scranton,
Pa.__out