“Oh, yes!”
“Why! how perfectly stunning!” It developed the Gardner girl was just wild about poetry. And had Nathan ever had anything published?
Nathan gave her a blasé smile such as Kipling might bestow on a high-school sophomore from Racine, Wisconsin. Certainly he had been published. No one could count themselves real writers or poets until they had been published. Did she happen to have a file of last year’s Telegraphs handy?
Unfortunately the Cuttners did not keep such a lexicon of local pabulum handy about the house. The Daily Telegraph served a more practical purpose each morning by kindling the Cuttner fire. But it really didn’t matter! Anybody in Paris could tell her who Nathan Forge was and what he had done. All she had to do was ask.
The Gardner girl was gratifyingly impressed. To think she had come to know a poet and never realized it!
Nathan drummed his fingers on the chair arm, tightened his tie, took his feet from storage long enough to tap a tattoo on the carpet, put them back hastily, hitched on his chair, remarked it was too bad the Cuttners had gone to bed, for that unfortunate retirement of course precluded any chance of music.
Miss Carol Gardner immediately assured him that Grandpa Cuttner loved music, even in his sleep, and she would go to the public library to-morrow and read everything Nathan had ever written. In a sort of daze at thus entertaining a celebrity unawares, Carol moved across and twirled the piano stool—no one ever saw a piano stool twirled to its proper height for extemporaneous performance anyhow—and——What could Nathan sing?
Nathan affected a great ennui as he left his chair, and they went through the sheet music and popular ballads of the day with their heads rather close together.
Did he know this and did she know that? It was hard finding selections with which both were familiar. But this was awful pretty and maybe he could catch the words. So Carol played the opening bars of “Come Take a Ride in My Airship,” which was just then going the rounds of the picture shows, Graphophones and street pianos.
Nathan hummed this initial experiment in melodious aviation and then declared he believed it too high for his voice. He had something more negotiable ready: “Everybody Works but Father.” The sentiment was rather silly, of course, but the tune was catchy.