Page:Meanwhile (1927).pdf/18

 but knew their Freud. . . For that matter male old maids are quite as sympathetic—"

"How about their Freud?"

"They should worry! Though I'm sure Uncle Mortimer would come out of a psycho-analysis test quite intacto. He's three times as old as us, and all he has to show for it is a lot of holes he dug in Babylonia. With his income he could have kept a yacht and a prima donna and sowed bushels of oats. . . Can't you see poor Morty sowing!"

If one of Grover's classmates had conjured up the picture it would have led to enjoyable ribaldries; Rhoda conjuring it up horrified him a little.

"Don't be coarse," he said.

She turned a tender smile on him, which for worlds he wouldn't have acknowledged.

"I don't see why you can't stay home this summer," she protested, after a moment's silence. "Nobody nice goes abroad any more. It's only one of your romantic notions."

Romantic notions, he was superiorishly thinking, make the world go round. And it was beside the point to class him with the people who went abroad, for what had their expensive jaunts in common with his exotic thirst? "Before I'm too old to appreciate the flavor," he said, "I want to go to places like Cracow and Belgrade."

"They have narrow little streets that smell to heaven."