“I don't get it. They talk about things that aren't there. But I think I could make them see—”
“Oh, cut it out, Warble. You'd dust books so hard, you'd dust off the gilt edges. They're deep-sea thinkers, that bunch—let 'em alone. What'd they talk about?”
“About a book called 'Painted Shawls' or something, and about Thyco-Serapy, and about a play called 'The Housebroke Heart.' Take me to see it, will you, Bill?”
“You wouldn't like it. You'd prefer the movies.”
Four days later, Daisy Snow called and gave Warble a jolt or two.
“Huh, sizing me up, are they?” Warble sniffed. “Looking at me through the footle, distorted little microscope of their own silly scrubby little souls! Pooh, they couldn't, one of them, make a decent puff paste!”
“But we can get cooks to do that. The Intelligentsia seek for the rare essence of thought, for colored words and perfumed cadences—”
“There, there, Daisy, don't try me too far! What did Lotta Munn say about me?”
“Oh, she didn't say much. Just that you're too stout and you haven't any ideals and you don't know a picture from a hole in the wall, and she thinks a man like Dr. Petticoat is wasted on you.”