"Nothing," she remarked blithely, "short of a hammer could do it."
We laughed together, and the laughter brought us into an intimacy which to me, at least, was dangerously sweet. My head whirled suddenly.
"You asked me last night about the one thing I'd wanted most all my life," I said.
"The thing that made you learn Johnson's Dictionary by heart?" she asked.
"Only to the end of the c's. Don't credit me, please, with the whole alphabet."
"The thing, then," she corrected herself, "that made you learn the a, b, c's of Johnson's Dictionary by heart?"
"If you wish it I will tell you what it was."
For the first time her look wavered. "Is it very long? Here is Franklin Street, and in a little while we shall be at home."
"It is not long—it is very short. It is a single word of three letters."
"I thought you said it had covered every hour of your life?"