"
Her companion promptly capped her verse:--
"'I skip forty years,' said the baker in tears,"--
"You can't," she objected. "If you skipped half that, I don't
believe it would leave you much."
"When one is giving one's life history by request," he began, with
dignity, "interruptions--"
"It isn't by request," she protested. "I don't want your life
history. I won't have it! You shan't treat an unprotected and
helpless stranger so. Besides, I'm much more interested to know
how you came to be familiar with Lewis Carroll."
"Just because I've wasted my career on frivolous trifles like
science, you needn't think I've wholly neglected the true
inwardness of life, as exemplified in 'The Hunting of the Snark,'"
he said gravely.
"Do you know"--she leaned forward, searching his face--"I believe
you came out of that book yourself. ARE you a Boojum? Will you,
unless I 'charm you with smiles and soap,'
"'Softly and silently vanish away,
And never be heard of again'?"
"You're mixed. YOU'D be the one to do that if I were a real
Boojum. And you'll be doing it soon enough, anyway," he concluded
ruefully.
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