"Knowing what's to be known about Primitive Man," Miss Claxton answered. "He's the only man I ever cared a copper cent about!"
"Mine's writing a book that will make me famous overnight, I don't want to wait to awake some morning and find myself so," Cousin Eunice said, stooping over to set Waterloo's horse up on his wheels, for he would come unfixed every time Waterloo would yank him over a gravel; and all the time we were talking he kept up a chorus of "Fick horte! Fick horte!"
Rufe said his ambition was never to see an editor's paste-pot again, and he was turning to me to ask what mine is when the conversation was interrupted. I was glad that it was, for I should hate to tell them just what mine is. Somehow it is mostly about Sir Reginald de Beverley, and I'm old enough now to know that he may not be an English lord after all and dress in a coat of mail. He may be just a plain young doctor or lawyer, and we'll have to live in a cottage (only excuse me from a flat, I wouldn't live in a flat with Lord Byron) and maybe we'll just have chicken on Sunday. But as long as he has brown eyes and broad shoulders and lovely teeth I shall manage to do with crackers and peanut butter through the week. A woman will do anything for the man she loves.
But I didn't have to tell them all this, for just then we heard the gate click and saw our friend, Mr. Gayle, coming up the walk.
"There comes old Zephyr," Rufe said with a laugh. "It was the biggest lie on earth to name him Gayle. Even Breeze would have been an exaggeration."
"He's awfully smart," I told Rufe, for I hate to have my friends laughed at. "I know you and Julius joke about him on account of his gentle ways and broad-brimmed hats! Father says it's better to have something under your hat than to have so much style in its looks!"
"Well, he has something under his hat," Cousin Eunice said, "and hat enough to cover twice as much. But I think those old-timey things are becoming to him!"
"What is the subject about which he knows so much?" Miss Claxton asked, following him with her eyes until Dilsey let him in at the front door.
"Heaven," Rufe answered her, "and hell. He writes deep psychological stuff for the magazines and they pay him ten cents a word for it. He must spend his dimes building model tenements, for he certainly doesn't buy new hats with them."
"What does he say about Heaven and the other place?" Miss Claxton asked, much to our surprise, for we had thought she didn't care about anything but earth.