Old Hickory was pacin' his private office, scowlin' and grouchy, as he sends the word, and it didn't take any second sight to guess he was peeved about something. I has to snicker too when Cousin Inez floats in, smilin' mushy as usual.
She wa'n't smilin' any when she drifts out half an hour later. She's some flushed behind the ears, and her complexion was a little streaked under the eyes. She holds her chin up defiant, though, and slams the brass gate behind her. She'd hardly caught the elevator before there comes a snappy call for me on the buzzer.
"Boy," says Old Hickory, glarin' at me savage, "who is this T. Virgil Bunn?"
Almost had me tongue-tied for a minute, he shoots it at me so sudden. "Eh?" says I. "T. Virgil? Why, he's the sculptor poet."
"So I gather from this thing," says he, wavin' a thin book bound in baby blue and gold. "But what in the name of Sardanapalus and Xenophon is a sculptor poet, anyway?"
"Why, it's—it's—well, that's the way the papers always give it," says I. "Beyond that I pass."
"Humph!" grunts Old Hickory. "Then perhaps you'll tell me if this is poetry. Listen!
"'Like necklaces of diamonds hung
About my lady sweet,
So do we string our votive area
All up and down each street.
They shine upon the young and old,
The fair, the sad, the grim, the gay;
Who gather here from far and near
To worship in our Great White Way.'
"Now what's your honest opinion of that, Son? Is it poetry?
"Listens something like it," says I; "but I wouldn't want to say for sure."