Part 25 (2/2)
”But sometimes you are so funny and obstinate about things!”
”That is what Mr. Whitely used to say.”
”Don't mention that wretch's name to me! To think of that miserable little Western college making him an LL. D. because of your book!”
”Never mind, Maizie; here's a letter I received an hour ago from Jastrow, which tells me the University of Leipzig is going to give me a degree.”
”That he should steal your fame!”
”My Moor is five times the chap my Turk was.”
”But you might have had both!”
”And gone without you? Don't fret over it, my darling.”
”I can't help”--
She always ends this vein by abusing herself, which I wouldn't allow another human being to do, and which I don't like to hear, so I interrupted: ”Jastrow says he'll come over in March to visit us, and threatens to bring the ma.n.u.script of his whole seventeen volumes, for me to take a final look at it before he sends it to press.”
”The dear old thing!” she said tenderly. ”I love him so for what he was to you that I believe I shall welcome him with a kiss.”
”Why make the rest of his life unhappy?”
”Is that the way it affects you?”
”Woman is born illogical, and even the cleverest of her s.e.x cannot entirely overcome the taint. After you give me a kiss I bear in mind that I am to have another, and that makes me very happy. But if you kiss Jastrow, the poor fellow will go back to Germany and pine away into his grave. Even his fifty-two dialects will not satisfy him after your l.a.b.i.al.”
”Oh, you silly!” she exclaimed; but, my dears, I think she is really, in her secret heart, fond of silliness, for she leaned over and--There, I'll stop being what she called me.
”We'll give him a great reception,” she continued, ”and have every one worth knowing to meet him.”
”He is the shyest of beings.”
”How books and learning do refine men!” she said.
”I am afraid they do make weaklings of us.”
”Will you never get over the idea that you are weak?” she cried; for it is one of her pet superst.i.tions that I am not.
”You'll frighten me out of it if you speak like that.”
”You are--well--that is really what I came to ask for. Just to please your own wife, you will, Donald, won't you?”
”The distinction between 'will' and 'won't' is clearly set forth in a somewhat well-known song concerning a spider and a fly.”
”Oh, you bad boy!”
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