Page:The beautiful and damned.djvu/168

 154 : Well, natural selection?


 * Wrong.


 * I give it up.


 * Ontogony recapitulates phyllogony.


 * Take your base!


 * Ask you another. What's the influence of mice on the clover crop? (Laughter.)


 * What's the influence of rats on the Decalogue?


 * Shut up, you saphead. There is a connection.


 * What is it then?


 * (Pausing a moment in growing disconcertion) Why, let's see. I seem to have forgotten exactly. Something about the bees eating the clover.


 * And the clover eating the mice! Haw! Haw!


 * (Frowning) Let me just think a minute.


 * (Sitting up suddenly) Listen!

(A volley of chatter explodes in the adjoining room. The six young men arise, feeling at their neckties.)


 * (Weightily) We'd better join the firing squad. They're going to take the picture, I guess. No, that's afterward.


 * Cable, you take the ragtime bridesmaid.


 * I wish to God I'd sent that present.


 * If you'll give me another minute I'll think of that about the mice.


 * I was usher last month for old Charlie McIntyre and——