'Certainly,' said he.
'All day?'
'If he cannot get it done in less time, certainly.'
'_Every_ day?'
'Certainly.'
'All through the years of his life?'
'All through the years of his strength, certainly.'
'What for?'
'My dear young lady, have you been living again on vegetables lately?'
'Why?'
'Your words sound as though your thoughts were watery.'
A nettled silence fell upon me, and while I was arranging how best to convince him of their substance he was shaking his head and saying that it was strange how the most intelligent women are unable really to think. 'Water,' he continued, 'is indispensable in its proper place and good in many others where, strictly, it might be done without. I have nothing to say against watery emotions, watery sentiments, even watery affections, especially in ladies, who would be less charming in proportion as they were more rigid. Ebb and flow, uncertainty, instability, unaccountableness, are becoming to your sex. But in the region of thought, of the intellect, of pure reason, everything should be very dry. The one place, my dear young lady, in which I will endure no water is on the brain.'
I had no answer ready. There seemed to be nothing left to do but to go home. I did go a few steps up the orchard, reflecting on the way men have of telling you you cannot think, or are not logical, at the very moment when you appear to yourself to be most unanswerable--a regrettable habit that at once puts a stop to interesting conversation,--and presently, as I was nearing our fence, he called after me. 'Fraulein Rose-Marie,' he called pleasantly.
'Well?' said I, looking down at him over a displeased shoulder.
'Come back.'
'No.'
'Come back and dine with us.'
'No.'
'There is mutton for dinner, and before that a soup full of the concentrated strength of beasts. Up there I know you will eat carrots and stewed apples, and I shall never be able to make you see what I see.'
'Heaven forbid that I ever should.'
'What, you do not desire to be reasonable?'
'I don't choose to argue with you.'
'Have I done anything?'
'You are not logical enough for me,' said I, anxious to be beforehand with the inevitable remark.
'Come, come,' said he, his face crinkling into smiles.
'It's true,' said I.
'Come back and prove it.'
'Useless.'
'You cannot.'
'I will not.'
'It is the same thing.'
I went on up the hill.
'Fraulein Rose-Marie!'
'Well?'
'Come back.'
'No.'
'Come back, and tell me why you think I ought to give up my work and sit for the rest of my days with hanging hands.'
I turned and looked down at him. 'Because,' I said, 'are you not fifty?
And is not that high time to begin and get something out of life?'
He adjusted his spectacles, and stared up at me attentively. 'Continue,'
he said.
'I look at your life, at all those fifty years of it, and I see it insufferably monotonous.'
'Continue.'
'Dull.'
'Continue.'
'Dusty.'
'Continue.'
'Dreary.'
'Continue.' He nodded his head gently at each adjective and counted them off on his fingers.
'I see it full of ink-spots, dog-eared grammars, and little boys.'
'Continue.'