human
Sure you look smarter than before you went! It inter_est_ed you now, didn't it, to have a chance really to see the old place?
gpt
Yes, said J.M.,
human
I've been thinkin' so many times since you come how much luckier you are than most Yankees that come back to their old homes. It must seem so good to you to see the houses just swarmin' with young life and to know that the trees and yards and rocks and brooks that give you such a good time when you was a boy, are goin' on givin' good times to a string of other boys.
gpt
Why, do you know, he cried,
human
You can never get me to believe that it don't make old Yankees feel low in their minds to go back to their old homes and find just a few white-headed rheumatickers potterin' around, an' the grass growing over everything as though it was a molderin' graveyard that nobody iver walked in, and sorra sign of life anyway you look up and down the street.
gpt
Good gracious, he exclaimed,
human
Say, Uncle Jerry, she said, lowering her voice,
gpt
Stefan Petrofsky asked me the other day if I thought you would let him talk to you about Ivan some evening?
human
Why, who are they, anyhow? asked J.M.
gpt
I've often wondered why they kept themselves so separate from the rest of us.
human
Petrofsky's wife, poor thing, died since they come here, and now there's only Stefan, he's the father, and Ivan, he's the boy. He's awful smart they say, and Stefan, he's about kilt himself to get the boy through the high school. He graduated this spring and now Stefan he says he wants him to get some _more_ education. He says their family, back in Russia, was real gentry and he wants Ivan to learn a lot so that he can help the poor Roosians who come here to do the right thing by the government--
gpt
asked J.M.
human
I don't seem to catch his idea.
gpt
Well, no more do I, sorra bit, confessed Mrs. McCartey serenely.
human
Not a breath of what he meant got to me, but what he _said_ was that Ivan's schoolin' had put queer ideas in his head to be an anarchist or somethin' and he thought that maybe more schoolin' would drive out _thim_ ideas and put in other ones yet. Hasn't it a foolish sound, now?
gpt
It sounds like the most interesting case I ever heard of, he cried, with a generous looseness of superlative new to him.
human
Is Ivan that tall, shy, sad-looking boy who goes with his father to work?
gpt
That's _him_. An' plays the fiddle fit to tear the heart out of your body, and reads big books till God knows what hour in the mornin'. His father, he says _he_ don't know what to do with him ... There's a big, bad devil of a Polack down to the works that wants him to join the anarchists in the fall and go to----
human
Oh, Mr. Petrofsky, may I have a few minutes' talk with you about your son?