"I don't know at all what to make of it."
"He couldn't have been"--her eyes grew very wide--"intoxicated!"
"No. I'm sure it wasn't that."
"Then _I_ don't know what to make of it, either. All that wild talk
about 'Bill Hammersley' and 'Simpledoria' and spring-boards in Scotland
and--"
"And an eleven-foot jump," I suggested.
"Why, there's no more a 'Bill Hammersley,'" she cried, with a gesture of
excited emphasis, "than there is a 'Simpledoria'!"
"So it appears," I agreed.
"He's lived there all alone," she said, solemnly, "in that big house, so
long, just sitting there evening after evening all by himself, never
going out, never reading anything, not even thinking; but just sitting
and sitting and sitting and SITTING--Well," she broke off, suddenly,
shook the frown from her forehead, and made me the offer of a dazzling
smile, "there's no use bothering one's own head about it."
"I'm glad to have a fellow-witness," I said. "It's so eerie I might have
concluded there was something the matter with ME."
"You're going to your work?" she asked, as I turned toward the gate.
"I'm very glad I don't have to go to mine."
"Yours?" I inquired, rather blankly.
"I teach algebra and plain geometry at the High School," said this
surprising young woman. "Thank Heaven, it's Saturday! I'm reading Les
Miserables for the seventh time, and I'm going to have a real ORGY over
Gervaise and the barricade this afternoon!"
III
I do not know why it should have astonished me to find that Miss
Apperthwaite was a teacher of mathematics except that (to my
inexperienced eye) she didn't look it.
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