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."