"She has a funny kind of hold on them. It's her brains. She has brains, and they appreciate it. I don't often want her men. They're apt to be so dreadful. Do you remember the biologist with the pearl buttons on his boots? This one is in politics—or something. He has a funny name—O'Bannon."
"Oh, yes—Dan O'Bannon."
"You know him?"
"I used to know him in college. Lord, he was a wild man in those days!" Bobby snickered reminiscently. "And now he's the local district attorney."
"What does a district attorney do, Bobby?"
"Why, he's a fellow elected by the county to prosecute——"
"Look here, Bobby, if the Emmonses ask you to spend this coming Sunday with them, go, because I'm going." She interrupted him because it was the kind of explanation that she had never been able to listen to. In fact she had so completely ceased to listen that she was unaware of having interrupted the answer to her own question, and Bobby did not care to bring the matter to her attention for fear her invitation to the Emmonses might be lost in the subsequent scuffle. Besides he esteemed it his own fault. Most people who ask you a question like that really mean to say, "Would there be anything interesting to me in the answer to this question? If not, for goodness' sake don't answer it." So he gladly abandoned defining the duties of the district attorney and answered her more important statement.
"Of course I'll go, only they haven't asked me."
"They will—or else I won't go. You'll come out on Friday afternoon."
"I can't, Lydia, until Saturday."