“I don’t know. Her family canceled a party they’d set for me—when they found out I was a British agent, practically.”
“Well, when you see her do me a favor. Keep trying to think what she’d be like if she didn’t have those looks.”
Jimmie laughed. “Why?”
“I always wondered myself—that’s all. And another chore. Try it. Make believe you’ve been sold on every single item your mother and your father subscribe to. Empty gun—not our war—America can’t be invaded—Roosevelt is a Communist and a hysteric.
Believe all that, on purpose. Then see how you feel about life!” Mr. Corinth walked to the table where Jimmie had been working. He picked up the pages of equations and read through them rapidly. His white eyebrows waggled and he blinked at Jimmie once or twice.
“Solve your personal equations first,” he said, as he walked from the room.
Jimmie went back to work. In a vehement, though unappraised, determination to refute the opinion of the philosophical old man, he worked through the lunch hour and the afternoon. No satisfying thought came out of his labors. At five, a whistle blew. The shifts changed. Jimmie shook himself; he was stiff from concentration. He put on his overshoes and his hat and locked the door of his laboratory.
Outside, the air was warmer. The snow had gone and the damp ground smelled pungently of sun-cured vegetation spread on it by autumn. Men and women were walking toward exits in the high fence. Some turned at the corner and started home on foot; others crossed a muddy street to the big parking lot and started their cars. The low-slanting sunlight throbbed with revving engines. Jimmie had a hunch that a second, belated, Indian summer would follow the freak cold spell which had bound Muskogewan in snow.
Such a warm spell was typical of the climate of the region. It would be followed by the crisp weather that led into Thanksgiving. His hunch exhilarated Jimmie. English weather was tedious and small-scale. The changes in this part of northern United States were dramatic, stimulating.
A horn blew as Jimmie checked out at the gatehouse. He looked up. Audrey was sitting in a coupe parked in the space alongside a fireplug. Jimmie put his pass in his wallet and took off his hat and walked over to her car. “Up to now,” he said, “I’ve refused all offers of chaufferage. I’ll take yours, though.”