“You know we are not very literary,” explained Bertha, catching the expression upon his face.
“They are really more hopeless cases even than I,” Helen added, sympathetically.
“Why don’t you try Phil and me?” inquired Emory. “We went through the Vatican library, so we are experts. At least they said it was a library. The only books we saw there were a few in show-cases—the rest they kept out of sight.”
“You would not recognize a real book if you saw it, Emory,” Armstrong replied, with resignation. “There is no hurry. Perhaps Miss Thayer will go with me some day soon.”
“Indeed I will,” Inez responded, with enthusiasm. “There is nothing I wish so much to do.”
“Good.” His appreciation was sincere. “I shall take real delight in introducing to you my old-time friends, with whom I often differ but, never quarrel.”
“Are they so real to you as that?” Inez asked, impressed by his tone.
“They are indeed,” Armstrong replied, seriously. “I visit and talk with them just as I would with you all. But they have an aggravating advantage over me, for, no matter how laboriously I argue with them, their original statement stands unmoved there upon the written page, as if enjoying my feeble effort to disturb its serenity, and defying me to do my worst.”
“I would much prefer to give them an absent treatment,” asserted Eustis.
“Inez is clearly the psychological subject,” Helen added. “At school she was forever putting us girls to shame by her mortifying familiarity with the classics. It is only fair that she should now be paid in her own coin.”