gigantic scruff, she moved away, resigning the situation to West. West
handled it in his best manner, civilly assisting the little man to rise,
and bowing himself off with the most graceful expressions of regret for
the mishap.

Miss Weyland was walking slowly, waiting for him, and he fell in beside
her on the sidewalk.

"Don't speak to me suddenly," said she, in rather a muffled voice. "I
don't want to scream on a public street."

"Scratch a professor and you find a Tartar," said West, laughing too.
"When I finally caught you, laggard that I was, you looked as if he were
being rude."

Miss Weyland questioned the rudeness; she said that the man was only
superbly natural. "Thoughts came to him and he blabbed them out
artlessly. The only things that he seemed in the least interested in
were his apples and Bee. Don't you think from this that he must be a
floral and faunal naturalist?"

"No Goth, at any rate. Did you happen to notice the tome sticking out of
his coat pocket? It was _The Religion of Humanity_, unless my old eyes
deceived me. Who under heaven reads Comte nowadays?"

"Not me," said Miss Weyland.

"There's nothing to it. As a wealthy old friend of mine once remarked,
people who read that sort of books never make over eighteen hundred a
year."