else you'd lam me--same as they
used to do in the crusades. You don't really care a hang."

"No, I really don't care!" she was amazed to hear herself admit.

"Of course, I'm terribly crude and vulgar, but then what else can you be
in dealing with a bunch of churches that haven't half the size or beauty
of farmers' red barns? And yet the dubs go on asserting that they
believe the church is God's house. If I were God, I'd sure object to
being worse housed than the cattle. But, gosh! let's pass that up. If I
started in on what I think of almost anything--churches or schools, or
this lying advertising game--I'd yelp all night, and you could always
answer me that I'm merely a neurotic failure, while the big guns that I
jump on own motor-cars." He stopped his rapid tirade, chucked a lump of
sugar at an interrogative cat which was making the round of the tables,
scowled, and suddenly fired at her:

"What do you think of me?"

"You're the kindest person I ever met."

"Huh? Kind? Good to my mother?"

"Perhaps. You've made the office happy for me. I really admire you.... I
s'pose I'm terribly unladylike to tell you."

"Gee whiz!" he marveled. "Got an admirer! And I always thought you were
an uncommonly level-headed girl. Shows how you can fool 'em."

He smiled at her, directly, rather forlornly, proud of her praise.

Regardless of other tables, he thrust his arm across, and with the side
of his hand touched the side of hers for a second. Dejectedly he said:
"But why do you like me? I've good intentions; I'm willing to pinch
Tolstoi's laurels right off his grave, and orate like William Jennings
Bryan. And there's a million yearners like me. There ain't a
hall-bedroom boy in New York that wouldn't like to be a genius."

"I like you because you have fire. Mr. Babson, do you--"

"Walter!"

"How premature you are!"

"Walter!"

"You'll be calling me 'Una' next, and think how shocked the girls will
be."

"Oh no. I've quite decided to call you 'Goldie.' Sounds nice and
sentimental. But for heaven's sake go on telling me why you like me.
That isn't a hackneyed subject."

"Oh, I've never known anybody with _fire_, except maybe S. Herbert Ross,
and he--he--"

"He blobs around."

"Yes, something like that. I don't know whether you are ever going to do
anything with your fire, but you do have it, Mr. Babson!"

"I'll probably get fired with it.... Say, do you read Omar?"

In nothing do the inarticulate "million hall-r