It is not unlikely that she would have
accepted any idea encased in this radiant formula--which was perhaps not
a formula; it was the _reductio ad absurdum_ of all formulas.
Then eventually, but gorgeously, would come Dick's turn.
"You've heard of the new poetry movement. You haven't? Well, it's a lot
of young poets that are breaking away from the old forms and doing a lot
of good. Well, what I was going to say was that my book is going to
start a new prose movement, a sort of renaissance."
"I'm sure it will," beamed Mrs. Gilbert. "I'm _sure_ it will. I went to
Jenny Martin last Tuesday, the palmist, you know, that every one's _mad_
about. I told her my nephew was engaged upon a work and she said she
knew I'd be glad to hear that his success would be _extraordinary_. But
she'd never seen you or known anything about you--not even your _name_."
Having made the proper noises to express his amazement at this
astounding phenomenon, Dick waved her theme by him as though he were an
arbitrary traffic policeman, and, so to speak, beckoned forward his
own traffic.
"I'm absorbed, Aunt Catherine," he assured her, "I really am. All my
friends are joshing me--oh, I see the humor in it and I don't care.
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