“So far,” he replied.
“Then don’t you think I ought to know something about you?”
“I am flattered that you care to.” He laid a hand over his heart and bowed profoundly.
“My curiosity is of the idlest imaginable,” she responded cruelly.
“I regret that bow,” he said. “However, I shall tell you anyhow. I am like the prestidigitateur in that I have nothing to conceal. And,” he added ruefully, “mighty little to reveal. My name is Parmley, surnamed Ethan. I am holding nothing back there, for I have no middle name. It has been a custom in our family since the days of the disreputable old Norman robber from whom we are descended to exclude middle names. I was born in this same Commonwealth of Massachusetts of well-to-do and honest parents, both of whom have been dead for some years. I was an only child. Pray, Miss Devereux, consider——”
“If you don’t mind,” she interrupted, “I’d rather you didn’t call me that. I haven’t owned to it, you know.”
“Pardon me! I was about to ask you, Miss Clytie, to consider that fact when weighing my faults. As a child I was intensely interesting; I have gathered as much from my mother. I passed successfully through the measles, mumps, scarlet fever and whooping-cough. I also had the postage-stamp, bird-egg and autograph manias. Later I wriggled my way through a preparatory school—a sort of hot-house for tender young snobs—and later managed, by the skin of my teeth and a condition or two, to enter college. As it has been the custom for the Parmleys to go to Harvard, I went there too. I am boring you frightfully?”
“No.”