“Why—no. You believe that you’re the sport of destiny. Now a sport implies amusement of some kind. See?”
“Is the football amused when it’s kicked?” asked Katharine, with a short laugh.
“Now please don’t introduce football, Miss Lauderdale,” said Miner, without hesitation. “I don’t understand anything about it, and I know that I should, because it’s a mania just now. All the men get it when the winter comes on, and they sit up half the night at the club, drawing diagrams and talking Hebrew, and getting excited—I’ve seen them positively sitting up on their hind-legs in rows, and waving their paws and tearing their hair—just arguing about the points of a game half of them never played at all.”
“What a picture!” laughed Katharine.
“Isn’t it? But it’s just true. I’m going to write a book about it and call it ‘The Kicker Kicked’—you know, like Sartor Resartus—all full of philosophy and things. Can you say ‘Kicker Kicked’ twenty times very fast, Miss Lauderdale? I believe it’s impossible. I just left my three sisters—they’re slowly but firmly turning into aunts, you know—I left them all trying to say it as hard as they could, and the whole place clicked as though a thousand policemen’s rattles were all going at once—hard! And they were all showing their teeth and going mad over it.”
“I should think so—and that’s another picture.”
“By the bye, speaking of pictures, have you seen the Loan Collection? It’s full of portraits of children with such extraordinary expressions—they all look as though they had given up trying to educate their parents in despair. I wonder why everybody paints children? Nobody can. I believe it would take a child—who knew how to paint, of course,—to paint a child, and give just that something which real children have—just what makes them children.”
She was silent for a moment, following the unexpected train of thoughts. There were delicate sides to his nature that pleased Katharine as well as his nonsense.
“That’s a pretty idea,” she said, after thinking of it a few seconds.
“Everybody tries and fails,” answered Miner. “Why doesn’t somebody paint you?” he asked suddenly, looking at her.