him--which is enough for the present.

CHAPTER NINE

PAT, A NICE DOGGUMS

"'The human polyp incessantly builds upon a coral reef. They become
lithified as it were and constitute the strata of the psychozoic
stage'--I told you the butter's at the spring. Will you leave me alone?
That's the third page I've spoiled over psycho-what-you-call-it. Go on
back and herd your goats, and for gracious sake, can that tulip-and-rose
song! I hate it." Helen May ripped a page with two carbon copies out of
the machine, pulled out the carbons and crumpled three sheets of paper
into a ball which she threw into a far corner.

"Gee, but you're pecky to-day! You act like an extra slammed into a sob
lead and gettin' up stage about it. I wish that long-worded hide had
never showed up with his soiled package of nut science. A feller can't
_live_ with you, by gosh, since you--"

"Well, listen to this, Vic! 'There is a radical difference between
organic and social evolution, the formula most easily expressing this
distinction being that environment transforms the animal, while man
transforms the environment. This transformation--'"

"Hel-up! Hel-up!" Vic went staggering out of the door with his palm
pressed against his forehead in the gesture meant to register great
mental agony, while his face was split with that nearly famous comedy
grin of his. "Serves you right," he flung hack at her in his normal tone
of brotherly condescension. "The way you fell for that nut, like you was
a starved squirrel shut up in a peanut wagon, by gosh! Hope you're bogged
down in jawbreakers the rest of the summer. Serves yuh right, but you
needn't think you can take it out on me. And," he draped himself around
the door jamb to add pointedly, "you should worry about the tulip song.
If I'm willing to stand for you yawping day and night about the sun
growin' co-old, and all that bunk--"

"Oh, beat it, and shut up!" Helen May looked up from evening the edges of
fresh paper and carbon to say sharply: "You better take a look and see
where Billy is. And I'll tell you one thing: If you go and lose any more
goats, you needn't think for a minute that I'll walk my head off getting
them for you."

"Aw, where do you get that line--walk your head off? I seem to remember a
close-up of you riding home on horseback with moonlight atmosphere and a
fellow to drive your goats. And you giving him the baby-eyed stare like
he was a screen idol and you was an extra that w