“Backbone? Last vertebra!”
“As for 'Main Street,' it's—”
“It's the hardest book to read through without fallin' asleep where you sit, though, that I've struck since the time I had to repeat Geology.” Peter smiles. “But, there, Johnny, I guess I'm the bone-head part of the readin' public—”
“That's why you're just the kind of person that ought to read books like that, Peter. The reading public in general likes candy laxatives, I'll admit—Old Nest stuff—but you—”
“'Nobody else will ever have to write the description of a small Middle Western Town'” quotes Oliver, discontentedly. “Well, who ever wanted to write the description of a small Middle Western Town?” and from Ricky French, selecting his words like flowers for a boutonniere.
“The trouble with 'Main Street' is not that it isn't the truth but that it isn't nearly the whole truth. Now Sherwood Anderson—”
“Tennyson. Who was Tennyson? He died young.”
“Well, if that is Clara Stratton's idea of how to play a woman who did.”
The two sentences seem to come from no one and arrive nowhere. They are batted out of the conversation like toy balloons.
“Bunny Andrews sailed for Paris Thursday,” says Ted Billett longingly. “Two years at the Beaux Arts,” and for an instant the splintering of lances stops, like the hush in a tournament when the marshal throws down the warder, at the shine of that single word.