really to be in the pulpit, or a monastery, or something, for publisher;
and that young Beaton, who probably hasn't a moral fibre in his
composition, for the art man, I don't know but we could give Fulkerson
odds and still beat him in oddity."

His wife heaved a deep sigh of apprehension, of renunciation, of
monition. "Well, I'm glad you can feel so light about it, Basil."

"Light? I feel gay! With Fulkerson at the helm, I tell you the rocks
and the lee shore had better keep out of the way." He laughed with
pleasure in his metaphor. "Just when you think Fulkerson has taken leave
of his senses he says or does something that shows he is on the most
intimate and inalienable terms with them all the time. You know how I've
been worrying over those foreign periodicals, and trying to get some
translations from them for the first number? Well, Fulkerson has brought
his centipedal mind to bear on the subject, and he's suggested that old
German friend of mine I was telling you of--the one I met in the
restaurant--the friend of my youth."

"Do you think he could do it?" asked Mrs. March, sceptically.

"He's a perfect Babel of strange tongues; and he's the very man for the
work, and I was ashamed I hadn't thought of him myself, for I suspect he
needs the work."

"Well, be careful how you get mixed up with him, then, Basil," said his
wife, who had the natural misgiving concerning the friends of her
husband's youth that all wives have. "You know the Germans are so
unscrupulously dependent. You don't know anything about him now."