"Oh no, you haven't," wheedled Aunt Kate. "Try to think of it, dearie."
"Can't think of it now. Shall I ask him again?"
"Certainly not! How preposterous! As if it made the slightest difference in the world!"
But it made difference enough for Aunt Kate to ask a moment later: "And how did it happen, Worthie, that this kindly philosopher should have deemed me worth knowing?"
"Oh, I don't know. 'Cause he liked the puppies' names, I guess. I told
him how their mother was just Queen, but how they was Pourquoi and
N'est-ce-pas—a 'quirer and 'versalist and so then he said: 'And which is
Aunt Kate?'"
"Which is Aunt Kate? What did he mean?"
"'Is she content to be just Queen,' he said, 'or is she'—there was a lot of long words, you wouldn't understand them, Aunt Kate—I didn't either—'does she show a puppyish tendon'—tendon something—'to butt into the universe?'"
Suddenly Aunt Kate's face grew pink and she sat straight. "Worth, was this one of the men?"
"Oh no, Aunt Kate. He's not one of the men. He's just a man. He's the man that mends the boats."
"'The man that mends the boats!' He sounds like a creature in flowing robes out of a mythology book, or the being expressing the high and noble sentiments calling everybody down in a new-thoughtish play."