Page:Bobbie, General Manager (1913).djvu/336

326 "Know it. My, but what a girl I did marry! You do take the bull by the horns. If you had had a son what a staver he would have been."

I forgot Ruth and her affairs in a twinkling.

I wilted like a flower plucked from its stem.

"You used to say that in the simple future, and now it's past subjunctive," I trembled.

Will laughed at me. "Don't like my tenses! What a particular person! Well, how's this? Here's a sentence in the simple present. It always has been present tense, always will be present." He leaned and whispered something in my ear.

"Pooh!" I scoffed, smiling for his sake. "That's too easy. It's the first tense of the first verb given in every grammar of every language in the world!"