lots of things. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself." She paused in breathless indignation, looking defiantly at
Firmstone.

Firmstone chuckled.

"Looks as if I were a pretty bad lot, doesn't it? How did you find out
all that?"

"I didn't have to find it out. I hear M'sieu Mo-reeson and Daddy and
Luna and lots of others talking about it. Daddy says you're 'smooth,
ver' smooth stuff,'" she mimicked. Elise disregarded minor
contradictions. "'Twon't do you any good, though. The day is not far
distant when down-trodden labour will rise and smite the oppressor.
Then----" her lips were still parted, but memory failed and inspiration
refused to take its place. "Oh, well," she concluded, lamely, "you'll
hunt your hole all right."

"You're an out-and-out socialist, aren't you?"

"A socialist?" Elise looked aghast. "What's a socialist?"

"A socialist is one who thinks that everyone else is as unhappy and
discontented as he is, and that anything that he can't get is better
than what he can. Won't you be seated?" Firmstone waved her to a
boulder.

Elise seated herself, but without taking her eyes from Firmstone's face.

"Now you're making fun of me."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"What makes you think so?"

"Because you sit there and grin and grin all the time, and use big words
that you know I can't understand. Where did you learn them?"

"At school."

"Oh, you've been to school, then, have you?"

"Yes."

"How long did you go to school?"

"Ten or twelve years, altogether."

"Ten or twelve years! What an awful stupid you must be!" She looked at
him critically; then, with a modifying intonation, "Unless you learned a
whole lot. I know I wouldn't have to go to school so long." She looked
very decided. Then, after a pause, "You must have gone clear through
your arithmetic. Zephyr taught me all about addition and division and
fractions, clear to square root. I wanted to go through square root, but
he said he didn't know anything about square root, and it wasn't any
use, anyway. Did you go through square root?"

"Yes. Do you want me to teach you square root?"

"Oh, perhaps so, some time," Elise answered, indifferently. "What else
did you study?"

"Algebra, trigonometry, Latin, Greek." Firmstone teasingly went through
the whole curriculum, ending with botany and zoology.

Elise fairly gasped.

"I never knew there was so much to learn. What's zoo--what did you call
it--about?"

"Zoology," explained