His name is Doctor Bynum and he's as handsome as Apollo and a bacteriologist, which is worse than a prohibitionist, for while the last-named won't let you drink whisky in peace, the other won't let you drink water in peace. Still, Miss Irene says he has the most honest brown eyes and the warmest, most comfortable-feeling hands she ever saw and she was beginning to love him in spite of their souls being on different planes.
"He doesn't care for one line in literature," she told mother, who is very fond of her and would like to see her settled in life. "I've tried him on everything from Marcus Aurelius to Gray's Elegy. When I got to this last he said, 'Good Lord! Eliminate it! It's my business to keep folks out of the churchyard instead of droning ditties after they're in it!' Now, do you call that anything short of savage?"
"I call it sensible," mother told her.
"But I hate sensible people—with no nonsense."
"Oh, nonsense is necessary to the digestion," mother answered quickly, "we all know that. But a little sense, now and then, it takes to pay the market men."
"Which, being interpreted, means that you're like grandmother. You hope I'll marry Doctor Bynum, but you greatly fear that it will be Gerald Fairfax!"
"All I have to say is that 'The Raven' is not a good fowl to roast for dinner," mother answered, with a twinkle in her eye, for Jean had come home from Mrs. West's the day before and said that Mr. Fairfax had been reading The Raven so real you were afraid it would fly down and peck your eyes out.
"Oh, Gerald and I don't believe in flesh foods!" she said loftily, then added quickly, "but I'm not going to marry him. Neither am I going to marry a man who calls my reincarnation theory 'bug-house talk.' I came away down here the very day after he said that, without telling him good-by or anything. And I'm just disappointed to death that he has not followed me long ago. I thought sure he would!"
"You don't deserve that he should ever think of you again," mother told her, looking as severe as she does when she tells me I'll never get married on earth unless I learn to be more tidy.
"I confess the 'conflicting doubts and opinions' do give me indigestion. Doctor Bynum has the most good-looking face I ever saw. And he's just lovely when he isn't perfectly hateful, and—mercy me! I think I'll get Mammy Lou to give me a spoonful of soda in a glass of warm water. I have an awful heaviness around my heart!"