"Don't trouble yourself, Miss Mayhew; fortune is favoring me once more, and I am on the point of discovering the favorite author you would not mention this morning. An encyclopedia, as I live! from A to B, with a hair-pin inserted sharply at the word Amsterdam. Really, Miss Ida, I can't account for your absorbing interest in Amsterdam."
"Mr. Van Berg, there is no use in trying to hide anything from you. You find me out every time and I'm really growing superstitious about it."
"I wish your words were true; but, for the life of me, I can't understand why you should crave encyclopaedias as August reading, nor can I see the remotest connection between the exquisite color of your face and the old Dutch city of Amsterdam."
"Well, the Fates are against me once more. Why I left that book there I don't know, for I'm not usually so careless. Mr. Van Berg, I scarcely need to remind you of a fact that you discovered long ago—I don't know anything. Do you not remember how you tried to talk with me one evening? You touched on almost as many subjects as that huge volume contains, and my face remained as vacant through them all as the blank pages in that book before the printed matter begins."
"But now, Miss Ida, your face is to me like this book after the printed matter begins, only I read there that which interests me far more than anything which this bulky tome contains, even under the word Amsterdam."
"You imagine far more than you see. I think artists are like poets, and are given to great flights. Besides, you are becoming versed in my small talk. When you tried it on the evening I referred to, you were just a trifle ponderous."
"Yes, I can now see myself performing like a lame elephant. Did you propose to read this encyclopaedia entirely through?"
"I might have skipped art as a subject far too deep for me."
"When you come to that let me take the place of the encyclopaedia. I will sit just here where you keep your book and give you a series of familiar lectures."
"I never enjoyed being lectured, sir!"