Hamilton White’s face hardened ever so little.
“Your questions are rather personal, and I must ask you to be more discreet,” he rebuked.
“A thousand pardons!” bowed the visitor. “For this indiscretion, I shall include some handsome oil paintings, which we give only to big jobbers with large orders for International Peanuts Products, when I fill the orders you have been so magnanimous as to favor me with.”
“That’s a mighty indigestible word, that magnanimous thing. Don’t put anything like that in the shipment with my peanuts,” declared Stacy.
“You don’t mean to say you don’t know the meaning of that word?” exclaimed Nora.
“Can’t say that I do,” answered Stacy carelessly. “What does it mean, Emma?”
“Your education has been neglected. Any schoolboy ought to know the meaning of a word so common as that,” returned Emma airily.
“All right, you tell us. I’ll swallow whatever you say—once!”
“Why, magnanimous means—it means—it means—Pshaw, I know what it means perfectly well, but somehow I can’t properly explain it.” Emma’s face was growing red. “Oh, Hamilton, you tell my ignorant companion what—”
“Ha, ha, ha!” chortled the fat boy. “You tell him, Hamilton.”