"I did not quite know what to say, until it flashed upon my mind that she meant 'hay-day.' I soon saw I was right, because she added:
"'Does going barefoot cure hay-fever? And is that the reason why so many people still talk of Socrates?'
"I stared at her. Was it really possible that she did not know who Socrates was? I tried to give a short sketch of your life, O Socrates, but I could not go beyond the time before you were born. For, when I said that your mother had been a midwife, my lady friend recoiled with an expression of terror.
"'What,' she exclaimed, 'he was the son of a midwife?—a midwife?—Pray, do not let us talk about such people! I hoped he was at least the son of a baronet. How could you ever endure his company?'
"'That was just it,' said I, 'I could not. His charm was so great, that for fear of neglecting everything else I fled from him like a hunted stag.'
"'But pray,' she retorted, 'what charm can there be in a son of a midwife? I can imagine some interest in a clever midwife,—but in her son? Oh, that is too absurd for words!'
"'My charming friend,' I answered, 'Socrates was, as he frequently remarked it, himself a sort of midwife, who never pretended to be parent to a thought, but only to have helped others to produce them.'
"'Oh, is that it,—' she said dryly, 'Socrates did manual services in midwifery? How lost to all shame your women must have been to engage a man in their most delicate moments. I now see why so many of my lady friends deserted a man who had announced lectures on Plato. He also talked about Socrates, and when it became known that Socrates was a wretched midwife's clerk, we left the lecture-hall in indignation. Fancy that man said he talked about Plato, and yet in his discourses he talked about nurseries, teetotalism, Christian Science and all such things as date only of yesterday, and of which Plato could have known nothing.'
"'But my lovely Entréa,' I interrupted, 'Plato does talk of all these things, and with a vengeance.'