“You might dig a bit,” suggested Jimmy cheerfully. “I’m told that digging is quite fascinating.”
“I’m sure your personal experience is very slight,” said Leon. “I wish I had enough energy to tear myself away from your scintillant society, and do some digging, though. I’ve got a lot of Milton to read.”
“Dear old John!” murmured Jimmy, stretching his feet further across the floor from the armchair in which he was reclining on his spine. “How well, and, oh, how fondly I recall his beautiful poems! Don’t you just dote on ‘L’Allegro’?”
“I do not,” replied Leon feelingly. “How much of him do we have, Jimmy?”
“Oh, lots, dearie. There’s his lovely ‘Il Penseroso,’ yet, and likewise the absorbing ‘Comus.’ Milton was a bright and cheerful writer, what?”
“What are you hombres talking about?” inquired Monty lazily. “What other brands of cigars does this fellow make?”
“Milton was not a cigarmaker,” answered Jimmy patiently. “And the ‘Il Penseroso’ is not a five-cent bundle of cabbage leaves. Milton was a poet. What he made was trouble. I don’t suppose,” he added, thoughtfully, “that Milton realized what a heap of worry he was laying out for the upper middle class at Grafton School, though. If he had, he wouldn’t have written the stuff. But he couldn’t foresee——”
“Of course, he couldn’t. Milton was blind.”
“Hello! Listen to him, Leon! He heard about it away out in Wyoming! Wonderful the way news travels nowadays, isn’t it?”