he asked intently. “Do you just go round kissing people?”
“Why, yes,” admitted Marcia, unruffled. “’At’s all life is. Just going round kissing people.”
“Well,” replied Horace emphatically, “I must say your ideas are horribly garbled! In the first place life isn’t just that, and in the second place I won’t kiss you. It might get to be a habit and I can’t get rid of habits. This year I’ve got in the habit of lolling in bed until seven-thirty.”
Marcia nodded understandingly.
“Do you ever have any fun?” she asked.
“What do you mean by fun?”
“See here,” said Marcia sternly, “I like you, Omar, but I wish you’d talk as if you had a line on what you were saying. You sound as if you were gargling a lot of words in your mouth and lost a bet every time you spilled a few. I asked you if you ever had any fun.”
Horace shook his head.
“Later, perhaps,” he answered. “You see I’m a plan. I’m an experiment. I don’t say that I don’t get tired of it sometimes—I do. Yet—oh, I can’t explain! But what you and Charlie Moon call fun wouldn’t be fun to me.”
“Please explain.”
Horace stared at her, started to speak and then, changing his mind, resumed his walk. After an unsuccessful attempt to determine whether or not he was looking at her Marcia smiled at him.
“Please explain.”
Horace turned.
“If I do, will you promise to tell Charlie Moon that I wasn’t in?”
“Uh-uh.”
“Very well, then. Here’s my history: I was a ‘why’ child. I wanted to see the wheels go round. My father was a young economics professor at Princeton. He brought me up on the system of answering every question I asked him to the best of his ability. My response to that gave him the idea of making an experiment in precocity. To aid in the massacre I had ear trouble—seven operations between the ages of nine and twelve. Of course this kept me apart from other boys and made me ripe for forcing. Anyway, while my generation was laboring through Uncle Remus I was honestly enjoying Catullus in the original.
“I passed off my college examinations when I was thirteen because I couldn’t help it. My chief associates were professors, and I took a tremendous pride in knowing that I had a fine intelligence, for though I was unusually gifted I was not abnormal in other ways. When I was sixteen I got tired of being a freak; I decided that some one had made a bad mistake. Still as I’d gone that far I concluded to finish it up by taking my degree of Master of Arts. My chief interest in life is the study of modern philosophy. I am a realist of the School of Anton Laurier—with Bergsonian trimmings—and I’ll be eighteen years old in two months. That’s all.”
“Whew!” exclaimed Marcia. “That’s enough! You do a neat job with the parts of speech.”
“Satisfied?”
“No, you haven’t kissed me.”
“It’s not in my programme,” demurred Horace. “Understand that I don’t pretend to be above physical things. They have their place, but——”
“Oh, don’t be so darned reasonable!”
“I can’t help it.”
“I hate these slot-machine people.”
“I assure you I—” began Horace.
“Oh, shut up!”
“My own rationality——”
“I didn’t say anything about your nationality. You’re an Amuricun, ar’n’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s O. K. with me. I got a notion I want to see you do something that isn’t in your highbrow programme. I want to see if a what-ch-call-em with Brazilian trimmings—that thing you said you were—can be a little human.”
Horace shook his head again.
“I won’t kiss you.”
“My life is blighted,” muttered Marcia tragically. “I’m a beaten woman. I’ll go through life without ever having a kiss with Brazilian trimmings.” She sighed. “Anyways, Omar, will you come and see my show?”
“What show?”
“I’m a wicked actress from ‘Home James’!”
“Light opera?”
“Yes—at a stretch. One of the characters is a Brazilian rice-planter. That might interest you.”
“I saw ‘The Bohemian Girl’ once,” reflected Horace aloud. “I enjoyed it—to some extent.”
“Then you’ll come?”
“Well, I’m—I’m——”
“Oh, I know—you’ve got to run down to Brazil for the week-end.”
“Not at all. I’d be delighted to come.”
Marcia clapped her hands.
“Goodyforyou! I’ll mail you a ticket—Thursday night?”
“Why, I——”
“Good! Thursday night it is.”
She stood up and walking close to him laid both hands on his shoulders.
“I like you, Omar. I’m sorry I tried to kid you. I thought you’d be sort of frozen, but you’re a nice boy.”
He eyed her sardonically.
“I’m several thousand generations older than you are.”
“You carry your age well.”
They shook hands gravely.
“My name’s Marcia Meadow,” she said emphatically. “’Member it—Marcia Meadow. And I won’t tell Charlie Moon you were in.”
An instant later as she was skimming down the last flight of stairs three at a time she heard a voice call over the upper banister: “Oh, say——”
She stopped and looked up—made out a vague form leaning over.
“Oh, say!” called the prodigy again. “Can you hear me?”
“Here’s your connection, Omar.”
“I hope I haven’t given you the impression that I consider kissing intrinsically irrational.”
“Impression?
