“Is he the maker of Hennigar’s jam?” interrupted Mauney, incredulously.
“Of course he is. He kept at it, as I was saying, until to-day a ten-acre factory buzzes with its manufacture and the plum-trees on a thousand hills grow for Hennigar alone. Oh, but it was wonderful jam,” she laughed, smacking her lips prettily. “It has ‘jammed’ out a small-sized marble palace in Riverton, a fleet of motor cars from Rolls to Buick, one for every mood, an army of liveried servants, one for every duty. It has ‘jammed’ Elias Hennigar into the Senate, into the front ranks of the Church, into the intimate counsels of the university—in fact, this jam has made him. But, of course, one doesn’t mention jam, now. He’s got it all washed off his hands by this time.”
“Doesn’t that beat the devil!” exclaimed Mauney. “Oh, I beg your pardon, Miss MacDowell.”
“Not at all,” she laughed. “I like to hear a man cuss. I sort of know where he stands, then. Listen and I’ll tell you a secret.”
Mauney leaned a little nearer her.
“I’m going to drop my course this spring,” she whispered, “and take a job under Professor Freeman as departmental secretary in history. Won’t that be fun? I’ll have Alfred Tanner to work with. He’s better than a circus any time, and then there’s Nutbrown Hennigar. Have you had him to lecture to you yet? No? I guess he sticks to the general course students. Well, he’s a scream, anyway. He’s very, very fond of me, mind you. Just imagine a Hennigar on my trail. He takes me to theatres often. And dances—oh, he can’t dance at all; he just rambles. He thinks it’s awfully queer of me to have accepted this job in the history department.”
Mauney’s attention was completely engaged by his charming companion. She puzzled him beyond measure. Why, he wondered, did she talk so confidently to him? She did not appear to be a rattle-brained woman, and yet how strangely familiar she had become.
“Say,” he said, after a little pause. “You’re kind of human, and I’m just going to ask you a question, if I may.”
She nodded.
“Why do you tell me so much?” he asked. “Mind you, I like it a whole lot. But how did you know I would like it?”