Old-Dad. Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
scarlet. "Next time you choose, perhaps you will choose more wisely, more consistently with your age and attainments! This mad infatuation is surely but the mood of a moment, the——" Recovering her self-control as quickly almost as she had lost it she sank back with typical statuesqueness into her throne- like Jacobean chair. "Surely, Mr. Burnarde," she asked in all sincerity, "you must admit that the—that the warning I have given you is at least—reasonable?"
"Absolutely reasonable!" said John Burnarde. "And absolutely damnable!" And turning on his heel he stalked from the room.
But even the winter night could not cool his cheeks now, nor the great pile of unread themes and forensics that he found awaiting him in his room, divert his tortured mind for one single second 53 from the problems of a lover to the problems of a professor. Somewhere indeed, he reasoned, among that white flare of papers a fresh stab of pain undoubtedly awaited him, a familiar handwriting strangely poignant, some little brand new bud of an idea forging valiantly upward through the clotted sod of academic tradition into the sunshine of acknowledged success, a purely prosy rhetorical question, perhaps, thrilled to its very interrogation mark by the sweet new secret hidden behind its formality!
With an irresistible impulse he began suddenly to rummage through the themes. Yes, here was the handwriting! With fingers that trembled he unfolded the page. Dated the very night before this dreadful thing had happened, surely somehow—somewhere on this very page the dreadful thing must be disproved!
"Dear Mr. Burnarde," ran the little note pinned to the page. "Dear Mr. Burnarde" (Oh, the delicious camouflage of the formality). Please, I beg of you do not be angry with me because I am submitting no prose theme this week! I just can't, somehow! I'm all verse these days! What do you think about this one? 54 There are oodles and oodles more lines to it of course, but this is to be the recurrent refrain:
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