“Oh, I know,” he cried in an animated tone. “He meant Kate. Tell me--what did he say about her?” He had searched his books for some parallel from which to draw a conclusion, but none of them had given him any relief. May be Mr. Horn had solved the problem.
“He said she was the first of the flood, though he was mighty sorry for you both; and he said, too, that, as she was the first to strike out for the shore, Kennedy Square ought to build a triumphal arch for her,” and St. George looked quizzically at Harry.
“Well, do you think there is any common sense in that?” blurted out the boy, twisting himself in his chair so he could get a better look at his uncle's face.
“No--it doesn't sound like it, but it may be profound wisdom all the same, if you can only see it from Richard's point of view. Try it. There's a heap of brains under his cranium.”
Harry fell to tapping the arm of his chair. Queer reasoning this of Mr. Horn's, he said to himself. He had always thought that he and his father were on the tip-top of any kind of tide, flood or ebb--and as for Kate, she was the white gull that skimmed its crest!
Again Harry dropped into deep thought, shifting his legs now and then in his restless, impatient way. If there was any comfort to be gotten out of this new doctrine he wanted to probe it to the bottom.
“And what does he say of Mr. Poe? Does he think he's a drunken lunatic, like some of the men at the club?”
“No, he thinks he is one of the greatest literary geniuses the country has yet produced. He has said so for years--ever since he began to write. Willis first became acquainted with Mr. Poe through a letter Richard gave him, and now that the papers are full of him, and everybody is talking about him, these backbiters like Bowdoin want to get into line and say they always thought so. But Richard has never wavered. Of course Poe loses his balance and topples backward once in a while--but he's getting over it. That is his mistake and it is unfortunate, but it isn't a crime. I can forgive him anything he does so he keeps to his ideals. If he had had a better bringing up and knew the difference between good rain-water Madeira and bad pump water and worse whiskey he would keep as straight as a church deacon. Too bad he doesn't.”