Part 4

"Don't you want this notebook?" she called, taking up the pad beside his plate.

"Yes, oh, yes, those are my notes. Where have I laid my glasses? Quick, my dear! I must not be late."

"On your head," said she.

She followed him to the hall, reminded him of his hat, his umbrella, restored the notebook, and finally saw him off, his thin back, with its scholarly stoop, disappearing down the street.

Bambina went back to the breakfast table, and took up the paper. She read all the want "ads" headed "female."

"Nothing promising here," she said. "I wonder if I could bring myself to teach little kids one, two, and one, two, three, in a select dancing class? I'd loathe it."

A ponderous black woman appeared in the door and filled it.

"Is you froo?"

"Yes, go ahead, Ardelia."

"Hab the Perfessor gone already?"

"Yes, he's gone."

"Well, he suttinly did tell me to remin' him of suthin' this mohnin', and I cain't des perzactly bemember what it was."

"Was it important?"

"Yassum. Seemed lak I bemember he tell me it was impo'tant."

"Serves him right for not telling me."

"It suttinly am queer the way he can't bemember. Seem lak his haid so full of figgers, or what you call them, ain' no room for nuthin' else."

"You and father get zero in memory--that's sure."

"I ain't got no trubble dat way, Miss Bambi. I bemember everything, 'cepting wot you tell me to bemember."

The dining-room door flew open at this point, and a handsome youth, with his hair upstanding, and his clothes in a wrinkle, appeared on the threshold. Bambi rose and started for him.

"Jarvis!" she exclaimed. "What has happened? Where have you been?"

"Sleeping in the garden."

"Dat's it--dat's it! Dat was wat I was to remin' the Perfessor of, dat a man was sleepin' in the garden."

"Sleeping in our garden? But why?"

"Because of the filthy commercialism of this age! Here I am, at the climax of my big play, a revolutionary play, I tell you, teeming with new and vital ideas, for a people on the down-slide, and a landlady, a puny, insignificant ant of a female, interrupts me to demand money, and when I assure her, most politely, that I have none, she puts me out, actually puts me out!"

Bambi choked back a laugh.

"Why didn't you come here?"

"I did. Your father refused to see me; he was working at his crazy figures. I burst in, and demanded you, but he couldn't remember where you had gone."

"What a pity! Well----"