She looked up at him and he responded. "But where did you learn to see things like this, and to put them into words? Not in a circus?"
"I told you I couldn't remember the circus. Mother was in one, and though Father never told me how he fell in love with her—he never talks of her—I think it must have been when he went back to see the people. He always took an interest in them and tried to help them. He does still. Even now, if anybody belonging to a circus asks him for something, he never refuses him. When he was twelve years old somebody took him away and sent him to school, but he always says he never learned anything at school except misinformation about life. No books, he says, ever taught him the truth except the Bible and 'Robinson Crusoe.' He used to read me chapters of those every day—and he does still when he has the time."
What a strange world it was! How full of colour and incident, how drenched with the quality of the unusual!
"And what did you learn?" he asked.
"I?" She was speaking earnestly. "Oh, I learned a great many—no, a multitude of things about life."
At this he broke into a laugh of pure delight. "With a special course of instruction in maneuvers," he rejoined.
Though her smile showed perplexity she tossed back his innuendo with defiance. "And by the time we meet again I shall have learned about—strategy."
How ready she was to fence, and how quick with her attack! It was easy to believe that there was Irish blood in her veins and an Irish sparkle in her wit.
"Oh, then you will out-general me entirely! Isn't it enough to force me to acknowledge your superior tactics?"
She appeared to scrutinize each separate letter. "Tactics? Have I been using superior tactics without knowing it?"