Bertram Copes Year | Page 6

necessary that you should."
"I suppose I have met one of them already."
"You have met Amy. But there are Hortense and Carolyn."
"What can they all be?" He wondered to himself: "daughters, nieces,
cousins, co-eds, boarders...?"
"Amy plays. Hortense paints. Carolyn is a poet."
"Amy plays? Pardon me for calling her Amy, but you have never given
me the rest of her name."
"I certainly presented you."
"To 'Amy'."
"Well, that was careless, if true. Her name is Amy Leffingwell; and
Hortense's name is----"
"Stop, please. Pay it out gradually. My poor head can hold only what it
can. Names without people to attach them to...."
"The people will be here presently," Medora Phillips said, rather
shortly. Surely this young man was taking his own tone. It was not
quite the tone usually taken by college boys on their first call. Her
position and her imposing surroundings--yes, her kindliness in noticing
him at all--might surely save her from informalities that almost shaped
into impertinences. Yet, on the other hand, nothing bored one more
than a young man who openly showed himself intimidated. What was
there behind this one? More than she had thought? Well, if so, none the
worse. Time might tell.
"So Miss Leffingwell plays?" He flared out his blue-white smile. "Let

me learn my lesson page by page."
"Yes, she plays," returned Medora Phillips briefly. "Guess what," she
continued presently, half placated.
They were again side by side on a sofa, each with an elbow on its back
and the elbows near together. Nor was Medora Phillips, though plump,
at all the graceless, dumpy little body she sometimes taxed herself with
being.
"What? Oh, piano, I suppose."
"Piano!"
"What's wrong?"
"The piano is common: it's assumed."
"Oh, she performs on something unusual? Xylophone?"
"Be serious."
"Trombone? I've seen wonders done on that in a 'lady orchestra'."
"Don't be grotesque." She drew her dark eyebrows into protest. "What a
sight!--a delicate young girl playing a trombone!"
"Well, then,--a harp. That's sometimes a pleasant sight."
"A harp needs an express wagon. Though of course it is pretty for the
arms."
"Arms? Let me see. The violin?"
"Of course. And that's probably the very first thing you thought of.
Why not have mentioned it?"
"I suppose I've been taught the duty of making conversation."

"The duty? Not the pleasure?"
"That remains to be...." He paused. "So she has arms," he pretended to
muse. "I confess I hadn't quite noticed."
"She passed you a cup of tea, didn't she?"
"Oh, surely. And a sandwich. And another. And a slice of layer cake,
with a fork. And another cup of tea. And a macaroon or two----"
"Am I a glutton?"
"Am I? Some of all that provender was for me, as I recall."
They were still side by side on the sofa. Both were cross--kneed, and
the tip of her russet boot almost grazed that of his Oxford tie. He did
not notice: he was already arranging the first paragraph of a letter to a
friend in Winnebago, Wisconsin. "Dear Arthur: I called,--as I said I
was going to. She is a scrapper. She goes at you hammer and
tongs--pretending to quarrel as a means of entertaining you..."
Medora Phillips removed her elbow from the back of the sofa, and
began to prod up her cushions. "How about your work?" she asked.
"What are you doing?"
He came back. "Oh, I'm boning. Some things still to make up. I'm
digging in the poetry of Gower--the 'moral Gower'."
"Well, I see no reason why poetry shouldn't be moral. Has he been
publishing anything lately that I ought to see?"
"Not--lately."
"I presume I can look into some of his older things."
"They are all old--five hundred years and more. He was a pal of
Chaucer's."
She gave him an indignant glance. "So that's it? You're laying traps for

me? You don't like me! You don't respect me!"
One of the recalcitrant cushions fell to the floor. They bumped heads in
trying to pick it up.
"Traps!" he said. "Never in the world! Don't think it! Why, Gower is
just a necessary old bore. Nobody's supposed to know much about
him--except instructors and their hapless students."
He added one more sentence to his letter to "Arthur": "She pushes you
pretty hard. A little of it goes a good way..."
"Oh, if that's the case..." she said. "How about your thesis?" she went
on swiftly. "What are you going to write about?"
"I was thinking of Shakespeare."
"Shakespeare! There you go again! Ridiculing me to my very face!"
"Not at all. There's lots to say about him--or them."
"Oh, you believe in Bacon!"
"Not at all--once more. I should like to take a year and spend it among
the manor-houses of Warwickshire. But I suppose nobody would stake