"My dear," I protested, "I recollect exactly. It was—"
"No, I don't believe you do. I cannot trust you at all with beans. But I should like to know why you plant ten or twelve kinds of beans when the only kind we like are limas!"
"Why—the—catalogue advises—"
"Yes, the catalogue advises—"
"You don't seem to understand, my dear, that—"
"Now, why don't I understand?"
I paused. This is always a hard question, and peculiarly hard as the end of a series, and on a topic as difficult as beans. I don't know beans. There is little or nothing about beans in the history of philosophy or in poetry. Thoreau says that when he was hoeing his beans it was not beans that he hoed nor he that hoed beans—which was the only saying that came to mind at the moment, and under the circumstances did not seem to help me much.
"Well," I replied, fumbling among my stock of ready-made reasons, "I—really—don't—know exactly why you don't understand. Indeed, I really don't know—that I exactly understand. Everything is full of things that even I can't understand—how to explain my tendency to plant all kinds of beans, for instance; or my 'weakness,' as you call it, for seed catalogues; or—"
She opened her magazine, and I hastened to get the stool for her feet. As I adjusted the light for her she said:—
"Let me remind you that this is the night of the annual banquet of your Swampatalk Club; you don't intend to forego that famous roast beef for the seed catalogues?"