Part 12 (2/2)
Milford smiled to think of the road leading from the Professor's castle, of the portcullis that had come near falling on him. He saw the mistress of the castle standing with her hands on her hips.
”He has so many fine words,” said Gunhild. ”Why don't they send him to the Congress?”
”Because they've got too many fine words there already, I guess,”
Milford answered.
”But is he not a very smart man?”
”Oh, yes, smart enough, I guess. That's what's the matter with him--too smart.”
”But how can a man be too smart?”
”I give it up. But it seems as if it takes a fool to make a success of life; the hogs of the business world root up money.”
”I do not understand. You are making some fun of me.”
”No, I'm giving it to you straight. The successful business man wears bristles on his back.”
She laughed at this. She said that she knew he was making fun of her; but she liked to hear him talk like that. It was so new to her.
”Ha! her complexion reminds me of a tinted vase with the light seeping through it,” said the Professor, talking to the ”discoverer,” but with his eyes fixed upon the Norwegian girl. ”A flower come up out of the wild and long-neglected garden of the Viking. And how truly American those people soon become! Blood, madam; it is blood.”
”Gunhild is a good girl, and knows nothing so well as she does honor.”
”A girl who knows honor is splendidly equipped, madam. I have a daughter. And who is it that accompanies her? It is honor, madam.
Throughout the seasons, they are together, arm about waist, like school girls, studying virtue from the same book.”
She leaned over and touched his arm. ”I want to ask you something. Do you know very much about Mr. Milford?”
”He warmed his hand with his heart, madam, and extended it to me.”
”But don't you think he's peculiar?”
”All things are peculiar until we understand them.”
”I know, but isn't there something strange about his being here as he is, working on a farm?”
”Not to me, when I meditate upon the fact that I myself keep books and do general roust-about work for a planing mill. Roust-about--idiomatic, good, and to the point.”
”But farm work is so hard,” she persisted. ”And he appears to be so well equipped for something better. At times, he is almost brilliant.”
”A brightness in the rough,” said the Professor. ”He has that crude quality of force which sometimes puts to shame the more nearly even puissance of a systematic training.”
She looked at him as if her eyes said, ”Charming.” And the world had suffered him to go to seed, nodding his ripe and bursting pod in the empty air. It was a shame. But his treatise on philosophy--she must find out about that.
”Professor, have you ever written anything?”
He smiled. ”Madam, the web I have woven, if spun straight, would encircle the globe. I have written.”
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