“What speech?” asked the boy.
“You know what speech—the toast!”
“I don’t know, Mr. Hod. I just looked at the faces—and the wine—and—and—Betty!—and it just came out.”
“Is that the truth?”
“Sure, it’s the truth. What was it I said that was so awful wonderful?”
“Don’t you remember what you said?”
The boy laughed ashamedly. “—I couldn’t repeat it if it cost me my life,” he replied. “It—just—came—out!”
Late that night the old editor lay in his bed thinking of many things.
“The things in life are far stranger than the things in story books,” he said. Then in the velvet dark he whispered: “Strange! Strange!”