Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/33

 He came back. "Oh, I'm boning. Some things still to make up. I'm digging in the poetry of Gower—the 'moral Gower'."

"Well, I see no reason why poetry shouldn't be moral. Has he been publishing anything lately that I ought to see?"

"Not—lately."

"I presume I can look into some of his older things."

"They are all old—five hundred years and more. He was a pal of Chaucer's."

She gave him an indignant glance. "So that's it? You're laying traps for me? You don't like me! You don't respect me!"

One of the recalcitrant cushions fell to the floor. They bumped heads in trying to pick it up.

"Traps!" he said. "Never in the world! Don't think it! Why, Gower is just a necessary old bore. Nobody's supposed to know much about him—except instructors and their hapless students."

He added one more sentence to his letter to "Arthur": "She pushes you pretty hard. A little of it goes a good way "

"Oh, if that's the case " she said. "How about your thesis?" she went on swiftly. "What are you going to write about?"

"I was thinking of Shakespeare."

"Shakespeare! There you go again! Ridiculing me to my very face!"

"Not at all. There's lots to say about him—or them."

"Oh, you believe in Bacon!"