Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/126

 earlier, Grover made a clean breast of his intrusion into the life class.

His companion, whose name turned out to be Vaudreuil, was diverted. Or rather, he seemed to find amusement in something behind the episode, in the attitude of the narrator. He thinks me naive, thought Grover, and perhaps I am, but D. V. I won't always be. Give me time.

"Sans blague?" asked Vaudreuil, incredulously, "you had never seen a woman before?"

"Life is so funny, Grover reflected. Here he is shocked because I hadn't, and here am—I shocked because you're supposed to have!

"I swear it," he said.

"Ne jurez point, mon ami; dites plutôt la verité! Quel âge avez-vous?"

"I'm twenty-three," Grover confessed, and the confession merely increased the bewilderment in his companion's countenance.

"But of course, in America—" A large gesture completed the sentence. It conveyed not only incomprehension of the new world, but a final disposal of it.

"Do you know America?" inquired Grover, a little testily.

"Only from a brief sojourn."

"What part did you visit?"

"Principally Boston."

Grover was startled. It was as if the man had read