“What else have you studied?”
“A little Gig-Gig-Greek.”
“Any thing else?”
“Some algebra and some Fif-Fif-French.”
“Where do you come from?”
“From Baltimore,” drawled the prodigy, utterly unmoved by his employer’s manifest astonishment. “I was janitor of a school there, and the principal lent me his bib-bib-books.”
“What is your name?”
“M-M-Michael Quinlan.”
“And what was your father’s business?”
“He was a bib-bib-bricklayer,” the young man replied calmly, adding, reflectively, “when he wasn’t did-did-drunk.”