“You’re right,” I exclaimed, in admiration of the pattern. “You must have been a designer of such things.”
“No matter what I was,—the thing is what can I be now, to take my place in the economic world. These are, do you see, adaptations from snow crystals.”
“So they are! It takes me back to my school days.”
“Perhaps I’m harking back to those, too. I remember the pictures of snow crystals in ‘Steele’s Fourteen Weeks in Natural Science.’ Did you study that?”
“I did!” I replied, grinning; “in high school! But, is your memory returning?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it! I have recollection of all I learned in an educational way, but I can’t see any individual picture of me, personally,—oh, never mind! How can I get a position as master designer in some great factory?”
“That’s a big order,” I laughed. “But you can begin in a small way and rise to a proud eminence——”
“No, thanky! I’m not as young as I once was,—my favorite doctor puts me down at thirty,—plus or minus,—but I feel about sixty.”
“Really, Rivers, do you feel like an old man?”
“Not physically,—that’s the queer part. But I feel as if my life was all behind me——”