when a very small boy, to see if something somebody had said about fire
was true, how he dissected a strange and wonderful bird which came to the
house on a visitor's hat, how he inspired a whole crew of small boys to
run away from home as explorers, how he whipped a bigger boy most
unmercifully for calling the Germans big fools. Georgia arranged for her
cousin what she called a thoroughly consistent childhood. And then some
less high truth about his working his way through college, getting money
enough to go abroad, his absolute forgetfulness of everything when
immersed in work--facts and higher truth tallied here.

"Karl's queer," she said. "He's roasted a good deal by the academic
folks--pooh-hoos a lot of their stuff, you know. He seems to have a
strange notion that science, learning, the whole business is for
humanity. Unique conception, isn't it?"

After she went away, Beason said he had no doubt that when one came to
know Miss McCormick, he would see, in spite of her lightness of manner,
that she had many fine qualities.

"Qualities!" burst forth the enthusiastic Wyman. "Say--you just
ought to hear the newspaper fellows talk about Georgia McCormick! I
tell you she's a peach, and more than that, she's a brick. She's the
divide-her-last-penny kind--Georgia McCormick is. And I want you to know
that if ever any one had the joy of living stunt down pat, she's it. It's
an honest fact that if she was put in the penitentiary and you went to
see her after she'd been there awhile, she'd tell you so many funny and
interesting things about the pen. that you'd feel sore to think you
weren't in yourself. And _smart?_ And a hustler? Well, her paper's done
some fool things, but it's had sense to hold on to _her_ all right-all
right."