Part 28

"You'd know more about life when you had taken a course of us."

"Too much knowledge is a dangerous thing," he remarked. "Shall we get off and go into the Library?"

"Not to-day. That's part of your day. I want just people and things in mine."

"What are you to-day?" he inquired.

"An houri, a soulless houri," she retorted.

As they approached the University Club, Jarvis recognized it with scorn.

"Monument to the stupidity of modern education, probably full this minute of provincials from Harvard and Yale, all smugly resting in the assurance that they are men of culture."

"I adore the way you demolish worlds," Bambi sparkled up at him.

"Another monument," he remarked, indicating a new church lifting its spires among the money-changers' booths.

"Hic jacet, education and religion. Look at that slim white lady called the Plaza."

"You ought to name her 'Miss New York.'"

"Good, Jarvis. In time you will learn to play with me."

He frowned slightly.

"I know," she added, "I am scheduled under Interruptions in that famous notebook. Unless you play with me occasionally I shall become actively interruptive."

"You are as clever as a squirrel," he said. "Always hiding things and finding them."

"Hic jacet Bambi, along with the other self-important, modern institutions," she sighed humbly.

They rattled across the Circle and up Broadway. Bambi was silent, bored with its stupidity. It was not until they turned on to Riverside Drive that her enthusiasm bubbled up again.

"Don't you love rivers?" she exclaimed, as the Hudson sparkled at them in the sun.

"I've never known any," he replied.

"Oh, Mr. Hudson, Mr. Jocelyn," she said, instantly. "I thought, of course, you had met."

"You absurdity!" laughed Jarvis. "What is it that you love about rivers?"

"Oh, their subtlety, I suppose. They look and act so aimless, and they are going somewhere all the time. They are lazy and useful and--wet. I like them."

"Is there anything in the universe you don't like?" Jarvis inquired.

"Yes, but I can't think what it is just now," she answered, and sang "Ships of mine are floating--will they all come home?" so zestfully that an old gentleman in the front seat turned, with a smiling "I hope so, my dear!"

She nodded back at him gayly, to Jarvis's annoyance. As they approached Grant's Tomb, she glanced at him suspiciously. When they got safely by, she sighed with content.

"If you had said anything bromidic about Grant's Tomb, Jarvis Jocelyn, I should have thrown myself off the top of the stage to certain death."

"At times you underestimate me," he replied.

At Claremont, Bambi ordered a most enticing repast, and they were very gay. Everybody seemed gay, too. The sun shone, the early spring air was soft, and a certain gala "stolen sweets" air of Claremont made it seem their most intimate meal.