Page:MacGrath--The luck of the Irish.djvu/194

 It's only the pedant who could remember all those names and what they meant. Some day you're going to be all there is of the firm Burns, Dolan & Co.; and what's knowing Praxiteles compared to that? Did it ever occur to you that God has given you something which He gives to few scholars?"

"What's that?" eagerly.

"Some day I'll tell you."

"Eventually—why not now, as the advertisement says?"

"No." She spoke seriously and decidedly, for the reason that she herself did not know exactly what she meant.

"All right. So long 's it's good it 'll keep. But say," he added, with diffidence, "I forgot to tell you. You know that busy missioner who's always making himself chairman of the Doc Gloom Association when anybody starts a laugh?—the one that's going to Calcutta? Well, he had the nerve … You see, you and I've been going around together a good deal."

"What did he say?"

"Well, he asked me when we were going to get married, and I told him when I could patent a mouth-organ as good as his."

"You told him that?"

"Ye-ah. Of course I could have told him to go to hell," William added, gravely.

"You mustn't talk like that—you mustn't."

"I know it; so I didn't. But I thought I'd tell you, so if he speaks to you you can hand him a line of talk that 'll curl his Horace Greeley for him."