“You shall know all,” he began, in the leisurely tone of one who commences a long narrative. “My parents were honest, but poor. At the age of three years and four months, a maternal uncle, who, having been a proofreader of Abyssinian dialect stories for a ladies’ magazine, was considered a literary prophet, foretold that I—”
“Help! Wait! Stop!—
“‘Oh, skip your dear uncle!’ the bellman exclaimed,
And impatiently tinkled his bell.”
Her companion promptly capped her verse:—
“‘I skip forty years,’ said the baker in tears,”—
“You can’t,” she objected. “If you skipped half that, I don’t believe it would leave you much.”
“When one is giving one’s life history by request,” he began, with dignity, “interruptions—”
“It isn’t by request,” she protested. “I don’t want your life history. I won’t have it! You shan’t treat an unprotected and helpless stranger so. Besides, I’m much more interested to know how you came to be familiar with Lewis Carroll.”
“Just because I’ve wasted my career on frivolous trifles like science, you needn’t think I’ve wholly neglected the true inwardness of life, as exemplified in ‘The Hunting of the Snark,’” he said gravely.
“Do you know”—she leaned forward, searching his face—“I believe you came out of that book yourself. Are you a Boojum? Will you, unless I ‘charm you with smiles and soap,’