“Nor rich?”
“Certainly not. Rich men also usually are bores—they talk about themselves too much.”
“Should he be a tall man?”
“Not too tall, for they’re lanky, nor short, because they get fat. You see, each girl has her own ideal about such matters. Then, she always marries a man as different as possible from her ideal.”
“Why does she marry a man at all, Helena?”
“She never knows. Why should she? But look—” she pointed out across the water—“the train is leaving the ferry boat. Isn’t that Captain Peterson going aboard the train?”
“Yes, Helena, I’ve sent him down-town to get some light reading for you and your Aunt Lucinda—Fox’s Book of Martyrs, and the Critique of Pure Reason—the latter especially recommended to yourself. I would I had in print a copy of my magnum opus, my treatment on native American culicidæ. My book on the mosquito is going to be handsomely illustrated, Helena, believe me.”
She turned upon me with a curious look. “Harry,” said she, “you’ve changed in some ways. If I were not so bored by life in yonder hat box, I might even be interested in you for a few minutes. You used always to be so sober, but now, sometimes, I wonder if I understand you. Honestly, you were an awful stick, and no girl likes a stick about her. What do girls care which dynasty it was that built the pyramids?—it’s Biskra they want to see. And we don’t care when or why Baron Haussmann built the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris—it’s the boulevard itself interests us.”
“It is the fate of genius to be cast aside,” said I. “No doubt even I shall be forgotten—even after my book on the culicidæ shall have been completed.”
“—So that,” she went on, not noticing me, “there is that one point in your favor.”