“Literary, purely. You’re going to write, some day. Oh, don’t look doubtful! That’s foreordained. It doesn’t take a seeress to prophesy that. And the Bible is the one book that a writer ought to read every day. Isaiah, Psalms, Proverbs. Pretty much all the Old Testament, and a lot of the New. It has grown into our intellectual life until its phrases and catchwords are full of overtones and sub-meanings. You’ve got to have it in your business; your coming business, I mean. I know what I’m talking about, Mr. Errol Banneker—moi qui parle. They offered me an instructorship in Literature when I graduated. I even threatened to take it, just for a joke on Dad. Now, will you be good and accept my fully explained and diagrammed Bible without fearing that I have designs on your soul?”
“Yes.”
“And will you please go back to your work at once, and by and by take me home and stay to supper? Miss Van Arsdale told me to ask you.”
“All right. I’ll be glad to. What will you do between now and four o’clock?”
“Prowl in your library and unearth more of your secrets.”
“You’re welcome if you can find any. I don’t deal in ’em.”
When Banneker, released from his duties until evening train time, rejoined her, and they were riding along the forest trail, he said:
“You’ve started me to theorizing about myself.”
“Do it aloud,” she invited.
“Well; all my boyhood I led a wandering life, as you know. We were never anywhere as much as a month at a time. In a way, I liked the change and adventure. In another way, I got dead sick of it. Don’t you suppose that my readiness to settle down and vegetate is the reaction from that?”