Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/28

 could gyrate here at once. There was young blood under her roof, and there was young blood to summon from outside; and to set this blood seething before the eyes of visiting celebrities in the arts and letters was her dearest wish. She had more than one spare bedroom, of course; and the Eminent and the Queer were always welcome for a sojourn of a week or so, whether they came to read papers and deliver lectures or not. She was quite as well satisfied when they didn't. If they would but sit upon her wide veranda in spring or autumn, or before her big open fireplace in winter and "just talk," she would be as open-eyed and open-eared as you pleased.

"This is much nicer," she would say. Nicer than what, she did not always make clear.

Yes, the house was nearly three-quarters of a mile to the west of the campus, but it was twice as far as if it had been north or south. Trains and trolleys, intent on serving the interests of the great majority, took their own courses and gave her guests no aid. If the evening turned cold or blustery or brought a driving rain she would say:

"You can't go out in this. You must stay all night. We have room and to spare."

If she wanted anybody to stay very much, she would even add:

"I can't think of your walking toward the lake with such a gale in your face,"—regardless of the fact that the lake wind was the rarest of them all and that in nine cases out of ten the rain or snow would be not in people's faces but at their backs.