Page:Bambi (1914).djvu/20

8 “But if you represent yourself as Y, and Jarvis as X, an unknown quantity–”

“Professor Parkhurst, stop there! There’s nothing so unreliable as figures, and everybody but a mathematician knows that. Figures lie right to your face.”

“Bambina, if you could coin your conversation–” Professor Parkhurst began.

“I am sorry to find you unreasonable about Jarvis, Professor.”

He gazed at her, in his absent-minded, startled way. He had never understood her since she was first put into his hands, aged six months, a fluffy bundle of motherless babyhood. She never ceased to startle him. She was an enigma beyond any puzzle in mathematics he had ever brought his mind to bear upon.

“How old are you, Bambina?”

“Shame on you, and you a mathematician. If James is forty-five, and Bambina is two thirds of half his age, how old is Bambi? I’m nineteen.”

His startled gaze deepened.

“Oh, you cannot be!” he objected.

“There you are. I told you figures lie. It says so in the family Bible, but maybe I’m only two.”