“Oh say, I know about that caveman—­Jack London’s guys.  I’m afraid I ain’t one.  Still—­on the cattle-boat—­Say, I wish you could of seen it when the gang were tying up the bulls, before starting.  Dark close place ’tween-decks, with the steers bellowin’ and all parked tight together, and the stiffs gettin’ seasick—­so seasick we just kind of staggered around; and we’d get hold of a head rope and yank and then let go, and the bosses, d yell, `Pull, or I’ll brain you.’  And then the fo’c’sle—­men packed in like herrings.”

She was leaning over the table, making a labyrinth with the currants from a cake and listening intently.  He stopped politely, feeling that he was talking too much.  But, “Go on, please do,” she commanded, and he told simply, seeing it more and more, of Satan and the Grenadier, of the fairies who had beckoned to him from the Irish coast hills, and the comradeship of Morton.

She interrupted only once, murmuring, “My dear, it’s a good thing you’re articulate, anyway—­” which didn’t seem to have any bearing on hay-bales.

She sent him away with a light “It’s been a good party, hasn’t it, caveman? (If you are a caveman.) Call for me tomorrow at three.  We’ll go to the Tate Gallery.”

She touched his hand in the fleetingest of grasps.

“Yes.  Good night, Miss Nash,” he quavered.

A morning of planning his conduct so that in accompanying Istra Nash to the Tate Gallery he might be the faithful shadow and beautiful transcript of Mittyford, Ph.D.  As a result, when he stood before the large canvases of Mr. Watts at the Tate he was so heavy and correctly appreciative, so ready not to enjoy the stories in the pictures of Millais, that Istra suddenly demanded: 

“Oh, my dear child, I have taken a great deal on my hands.  You’ve got to learn to play.  You don’t know how to play.  Come.  I shall teach you.  I don’t know why I should, either.  But—­come.”

She explained as they left the gallery:  “First, the art of riding on the buses.  Oh, it is an art, you know.  You must appreciate the flower-girls and the gr-r-rand young bobbies.  You must learn to watch for the blossoms on the restaurant terraces and roll on the grass in the parks.  You’re much too respectable to roll on the grass, aren’t you?  I’ll try ever so hard to teach you not to be.  And we’ll go to tea.  How many kinds of tea are there?”

“Oh, Ceylon and English Breakfast and—­oh—­Chinese.”

“B—­”

“And golf tees!” he added, excitedly, as they took a seat in front atop the bus.

“Puns are a beginning at least,” she reflected.

“But how many kinds of tea are there, Istra?...  Oh say, I hadn’t ought to—­”

“Course; call me Istra or anything else.  Only, you mustn’t call my bluff.  What do I know about tea?  All of us who play are bluffers, more or less, and we are ever so polite in pretending not to know the others are bluffing....  There’s lots of kinds of tea.  In the New York Chinatown I saw once—­Do you know Chinatown?  Being a New-Yorker, I don’t suppose you do.”