In the rose-haze of firelight he straightened up and stared at her, but

he settled into shyness again as she added: "Perhaps others would have done the same thing. I don't know. If they

had, I should have remembered them too. But it happened that it was you,

and I, uh, my father and I, will always be grateful. We both hope we may

see you in Seattle. What are you planning to do there? What is your

ambition? Or is that a rude question?"

"Why, uh----"

"What I mean---- I mean, how did you happen to want to go there, with a

garage at home? You still control it?"

"Oh yes. Left my mechanic in charge. Why, I just kind of decided

suddenly. I guess it was what they call an inspiration. Always wanted a

long trip, anyway, and I thought maybe in Seattle I could hook up with

something a little peppier than Schoenstrom. Maybe something in Alaska.

Always wished I were a mechanical or civil engineer so----"

"Then why don't you become one? You're young---- How old are you?"

"Twenty-five."

"We're both children, compared with Je--compared with some men who are

my friends. You're quite young enough to go to engineering school. And

take some academic courses on the side--English, so on. Why don't you?

Have you ever thought of it?"

"N-no, I hadn't thought of doing it, but---- All right. I will! In

Seattle! B'lieve the University of Washington is there."

"You mean it?"

"Yes. I do. You're the boss."

"That's--that's flattering, but---- Do you always make up your mind as

quickly as this?"

"When the boss gives orders!"

He smiled, and she smiled back, but this time it was she who was

embarrassed. "You're rather overwhelming. You change your life--if you

really do mean it--because a jeune fille from Brooklyn is so

impertinent, from her Olympian height of finishing-school learning, as

to suggest that you do so."

"I don't know what a jeune fille is, but I do know----" He sprang up.

He did not look at her. He paraded back and forth, three steps to the

right, three to the left, his hands in his pockets, his voice

impersonal. "I know you're the finest person I ever met. You're the

kind--I knew there must be people like you, because I knew the Joneses.

They're the only friends I've got that have, oh, I suppose it's what

they call culture."

In a long monologue, uninterrupted by Claire, he told of his affection

for the Schoenstrom "prof" and his wife. The practical, slangy Milt of

the garage was lost in the enthusiastic undergraduate adoring his

instructor in the university that exists as veritably in a teacher's or

a doctor's sitting-room in every Schoenstrom as it does in certain

lugubrious stone hulks recognized by a state legislature as magically

empowered to paste on sacred labels lettered "Bachelor of Arts."




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