. Doyle was out of
town, or I would have invited him to my party, and he would have given
us some of his lovely songs.... Do try the second verse, doctor. The
harmony is so lovely."

Carl sat at the other end of the library from Gertie and the piano,
while Mrs. Cowles entertained him. He obediently said "Yessum" and
"No, 'm" to the observations which she offered from the fullness of
her lack of experience of life. He sat straight and still. Behind his
fixed smile he was simultaneously longing to break into the musical
fiesta, and envying the dentist's ability to get married without
having to wait to grow up, and trying to follow what Mrs. Cowles was
saying.

She droned, while crocheting with high-minded industry a useless
piano-scarf, "Do you still go hunting, Carl?"

"Yessum. Quite a little rabbit-hunting. Oh, not very much."

(At the distant piano, across the shining acres of floor, the mystical
woman and a dentist had ceased singing, and were examining a fresh
sheet of music. The dentist coyly poked his finger at her coiffure,
and she slapped the finger, gurgling.)

"I hope you don't neglect your school work, though, Carl." Mrs. Cowles
held the scarf nearer the lamp and squinted at it, deliberately and
solemnly, through the eye-glasses that lorded it atop her severe nose.
A headachy scent of moth-balls was in the dull air. She forbiddingly
moved the shade of the lamp about a tenth of an inch. She removed some
non-existent dust from the wrought-iron standard. Her gestures said
that the lamp was decidedly more chic than the pink-shaded hanging
lamps, raised and lowered on squeaking chains, which characterized
most Joralemon living-rooms. She glanced at the red lambrequin over
the nearest window. The moth-ball smell grew more stupifying.

Carl felt stuffy in the top of his nose as he mumbled, "Oh, I work
pretty hard at chemistry, but, gee! I can't see much to all this
Latin."

"When you're a little _older_, Carl, you'll _learn_ that the things
you like now aren't necessarily the things that are _good_ for you. I
used to say to Gertrude--of course she is older than you, but she
hasn't been a young lady for so very long, even yet--and I used to say
to her, 'Gertrude, you will do exactly what I _tell_ you to, and not
what you _want_ to do, and we shall make--no--more--words--_about_
it!' And I think she _sees_ now that her mother was right about some
things! Dr. Doyle said to me, and of course you know, Carl, that