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Rh to think, to formulate a message to the world. No claims of earth were allowed to enter in.”

“But you climbed over the wall? You were a claim of earth?”

“You know how I sneaked in when he wasn’t looking.”

“If you could read me the letter, Bambina, or such portions of it as are not private, I might understand better what you are trying to say.”

“I’ll read it to you. It’s none of it private. He has nothing private to say to me.”

The Professor composed himself to listen, while she read Jarvis’s long screed aloud. At the end he, too, sat thoughtfully a few moments, his finger tips neatly matched in church steeples before him.

“I’m sometimes amazed at your judgment,” he said.

“Why my judgment?”

“I never would have seen any possibilities, myself, in the Jarvis whom you married.”

“Speaking of cryptic remarks—”

“I was trying to convey to your mind my belief that he may turn out a real man.”

“Oh, Jarvis was a good investment. I knew it at the time. Poor old thing, he’s frightfully lonesome.”