human
What do you think of me?
gpt
You're the kindest person I ever met.
human
Huh? Kind? Good to my mother?
gpt
Perhaps. You've made the office happy for me. I really admire you.... I s'pose I'm terribly unladylike to tell you.
human
Gee whiz! he marveled.
gpt
Got an admirer! And I always thought you were an uncommonly level-headed girl. Shows how you can fool 'em.
human
But why do you like me? I've good intentions; I'm willing to pinch Tolstoi's laurels right off his grave, and orate like William Jennings Bryan. And there's a million yearners like me. There ain't a hall-bedroom boy in New York that wouldn't like to be a genius.
gpt
I like you because you have fire. Mr. Babson, do you--
human
Walter!
gpt
How premature you are!
human
Walter!
gpt
You'll be calling me 'Una' next, and think how shocked the girls will be.
human
Oh no. I've quite decided to call you 'Goldie.' Sounds nice and sentimental. But for heaven's sake go on telling me why you like me. That isn't a hackneyed subject.
gpt
Oh, I've never known anybody with _fire_, except maybe S. Herbert Ross, and he--he--
human
He blobs around.
gpt
Yes, something like that. I don't know whether you are ever going to do anything with your fire, but you do have it, Mr. Babson!
human
I'll probably get fired with it.... Say, do you read Omar?
gpt
the ordinary, unshaved, not over-bathed, ungrammatical young men of any American city, so nearly transcend provincialism as in an enthusiasm over their favorite minor cynic, Elbert Hubbard or John Kendrick Bangs, or, in Walter Babson's case, Mr. Fitzgerald's variations on Omar. Una had read Omar as a pretty poem about roses and murmurous courts, but read him she had; and such was Walter's delight in that fact that he immediately endowed her with his own ability to enjoy cynicism. He jabbed at the menu with a fork and glowed and shouted,
human
Say, isn't it great, that quatrain about 'Take the cash and let the credit go'?