“Because it ain’t fair. It’s like stealin’ a man’s wife.”
“Some one stole your wife, didn’t he?”
Mark finally chuckled. “You’d hardly call it stealing. She just walked off when she knew I’d—heard about it.”
He blushed, hoping he hadn’t transgressed and hurriedly asked whether Bernard Shaw was really a vegetarian. He had no opinion of Shaw’s plays but thought “The Devil’s Disciple” a better play than “Magda.” “The Sunken Bell” was “pretty near up to Shakespeare.” He was worried because “Treasure Island” couldn’t be dramatized and recited “Thanatopsis” to the horror of Olive’s children. Olive interrupted the recital.
“That’ll be quite enough, thanks! Wherever did you pick up that sentimental rot?”
“Just what is bein’ sentimental?” Mark demanded.
“Writing such stuff and liking it when it’s written! I suspect you of Tennyson.”
“Never read any. Tried to. Couldn’t, except that Ulysses thing. Let’s go take a walk.”
“Too warm, thanks,” said Olive, wanting to see whether this would hold him in his basket chair under the limes.
“I’ll be back about tea time,” Mark promised, paused on his way up the garden to kiss Bobby Ilden’s fair head as the little boy reminded him of Gurdy Bernamer and vanished whistling “The Banks of the Wabash.”