"But you said you had an idea," said Isobel, whose private specialty was singleness of purpose.
"Oh--yes," said Jimaboy. Then he smote hard upon the anvil and forged one on the spur of the moment. "Suppose we call it The Post-Graduate School of W. B., Professor James Augustus Jimaboy, principal; Mrs. Isobel Jimaboy, assistant principal. How would that sound?"
"It would sound like the steam siren on the planing mill. But what is the 'W. B.'?"
"'Wedded Bliss,' of course. Here is the way it figures out. We've been married three years, and--"
"Three years, five months and fourteen days," she corrected.
"Excellent! That accuracy of yours would be worth a fortune on the faculty. But let me finish--during these three years, five months and fourteen days we have fought, bled and died on the literary battle-field; dined on bath-mitts and _café hydraulique_, walked past the opera-house entrance when our favorite play was on, and all that. But tell me, throb of my heart, have we ever gone shy on bliss?"
She met him half-way. It was the spirit in which they had faced the bill collector since the beginning of the period of leanness.
"Never, Jimmy, dear; not even hardly ever."
"There you are, then. Remains only for us to tell others how to do it; to found the Post-Graduate School of W. B. It's the one thing needful in a world of educational advantage; a world in which everything but the gentle art of being happy, though married, is taught by the postman. We have solved all the other problems, but there has been no renaissance in the art of matrimony. Think of the ten thousand divorces granted in a single state last year! My dear Isobel, we mustn't lose a day--an hour--a minute!"
"I don't know why we shouldn't do it, I'm sure," she mused. "They teach everything by mail nowadays. But who is going to die and leave us the endowment to start with?"
"That's the artistic beauty of the mail scheme," said Jimaboy, enthusiastically. "It doesn't require capitalizing; no buildings, no campus, no football team, no expensive university plant; nothing but an inspiration, a serviceable typewriter, and a little old postman to blow his whistle at the door."
"And the specialty," added Isobel, "though some of them don't seem to trouble themselves much about that. Oh, yes; and the advertising; that is where the endowment comes in, isn't it?"
