Mr. Quarterstone swallowed.
"I don't mean you to repeat every word I say," he said. "Just the examples. Now let's try the vowels again in a sentence. Say this:
'Faaar skiiies loooom O-ver meee.' "
"Faaar skiiies loooom O-ver meee."
"Daaark niiight draaaws neeear."
"The days are drawing in," Simon admitted politely.
Mr. Quarterstone's smile became somewhat glassy, but whatever else he may have been he was no quitter.
"I'm afraid he is a fraud," Simon told Rosalind Hale when he saw her the next day. "But he has a beautiful line of sugar for the flies. I was the complete gawky goof, the perfect bank clerk with dramatic ambitions — you could just see me going home and leering at myself in the mirror and imagining myself making love to Greta Garbo — but he told me he just couldn't believe how anyone with my poise couldn't have had any experience."
The girl's white teeth showed on her lower lip.
"But that's just what he told me!"