"Why can't you?" barked the catechist.
"Because I don't remember."
"You don't remember?" quite sharply from Captain Holiday. "How, don't remember? Why don't you?"
"Because it's such ages ago since I saw him," I replied. "Seven years! And what is the next question, please?"
The next question was a brusque
"How often had you seen him, then?"
"Often? Why, I saw him every day," I replied, going down on one knickerbockered knee to wrestle with the refractory door of a coop. "He stayed at my father's place for six months."
The voice above me decreed:
"Then, of course, you must know what the fellow was like."
Extraordinary, the constant interest he took in subjects which had absolutely nothing to do with him! But I'd said a man was like himself. That was next door to talking about what he was like himself—which Elizabeth had declared was all young men ever did want to talk about!