Clem

dare this throng surging about you, and that without delay. I am taking the ninth." "Everything in sight, that is," said Clem Merrit gaily. "No, I was n't saving it up, not for anybody, unless it was Reggie, and he 's got his share, / think." Lorimer scribbled his name with a smile. He thought that he would like to try the interesting experiment of putting a book of purest English prose into Miss Merrit's hands, and beseeching her to read therefrom. He wondered if she might not make Addison and De Quincey, in their most exalted and sonorous moments, read like modern slang. It was not always her words which put the flavor of cant into her phrasings, although her speech was plentifully besprinkled with the paprika-like zest of colloquialisms. The more he listened to her, the more definite his feeling grew that it was the girl's intonations which made her manner of speech distinctively her own. "The boy is fortunate," he said, not without intention, as he returned her card. "Yes," agreed the girl. "He 's got just about every other one, and then some. Yes, I remember you. I 've seen you all over the place lately. You 're a great friend of the Wineses, are n't you? I know lots of people here that way, by sight. You forever meet people here that way, till you know them like your grandmother's picture, and then, when you do the decent thing and speak?" She drew her bare shoulders together and shivered exaggeratedly. "But you 're not thatsort," she added. "Not...