mbi? I'm nineteen."

His startled gaze deepened.

"Oh, you cannot be!" he objected.

"There you are. I told you figures lie. It says so in the family Bible,
but maybe I'm only two."

"Nineteen years old! Dearie me!"

"You see I'm quite old enough to know my own mind. Have you a nine
o'clock class this morning?"

"I have."

"Well, hasten, Professor, or you'll get a tardy mark. It's ten minutes
of nine now."

He jumped up from his chair and started for the door.

"Don't you want this notebook?" she called, taking up the pad beside his
plate.

"Yes, oh, yes, those are my notes. Where have I laid my glasses? Quick,
my dear! I must not be late."

"On your head," said she.

She followed him to the hall, reminded him of his hat, his umbrella,
restored the notebook, and finally saw him off, his thin back, with its
scholarly stoop, disappearing down the street.

Bambina went back to the breakfast table, and took up the paper. She
read all the want "ads" headed "female."

"Nothing promising here," she said. "I wonder if I could bring myself to
teach little kids one, two, and one, two, three, in a select dancing
class? I'd loathe it."

A ponderous black woman appeared in the door and filled it.

"Is you froo?"

"Yes, go ahead, Ardelia."

"Hab the Perfessor gone already?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"Well, he suttinly did tell me to remin' him of suthin' this mohnin',
and I cain't des perzactly bemember what it was."

"Was it important?"

"Yassum. Seemed lak I bemember he tell me it was impo'tant."

"Serves him right for not telling me."

"It suttinly am queer the way he can't bemember. Seem lak his haid so
full of figgers, or what you call them, ain' no room for nuthin' else."

"You and father get zero in memory--that's sure."

"I ain't got no trubble dat way, Miss Bambi. I bemember everything,
'cepting wot you tell me to bemember."

The dining-room door flew open at this point, and a handsome youth, with
his hair upstanding, and his clothes in a wrinkle, appeared on the
threshold. Bambi rose and started for him.

"Jarvis!" she exclaimed. "What has happened? Where have you been?"

"Sleeping in the garden."

"Dat's it--dat's it! Dat was wat I was to remin' the Perfessor of, dat a
man was sleepin' in the garden."

"Sleeping in our garden? But why?"

"Because of the filthy commercialism of this age! Here I am, at the
climax of my big play, a revolutionary play, I tell you, teeming with
new and vit