I told him.
He kept tapping with his fingers on the table beside him and looking at me curiously. When I was through, he said:
"Well, we're a pretty bad lot, aren't we?"
I said earnestly:
"You're not!" which remark made him laugh in a rather mirthless sort of way, and he said:
"You don't know me, my child." Then, as if to change the subject: "But now, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?"
"I'd like to go to some big city in America," I said. "I think, if I got a chance, I'd succeed as a poet or author."
"Oh, that's your idea, is it?" he asked half good-humoredly, half rather cynically. I nodded.
"Well, what big city have you decided upon?"