"And people treat you a deal more civilly than any real need is, because they are ashamed of trafficking with you at all: I dispute if a poet could get such civility shown him in any other profession. And finally, there is the long idleness between business interviews, with nothing to do save sit there quiet-like and think about the queerness of things in general: and that is always rare employment for a poet, even without the tatters of so many lives and homes heaped up about him like spillikins. So that I would say in all, Mother Sereda, there is certainly no profession better suited to an old poet than the profession of pawnbroking." "Certainly, there may be something in what you tell me," observes Mother Sereda. "I know what the Little Gods are, and I know what work is, but I do not think about these other matters, nor about anything else. I bleach." "Ah, and a great deal more I could be saying, too, godmother, but for the fear of wearying you. Nor would I have run on at all about my private affairs were it not that we two are so close related. And kith makes kind, as people say." "But how can you and I be kin?" "Why, heyday, and was I not born upon a Wednesday? That makes you my godmother, does it not?" "I do not know, dearie, I am sure. Nobody ever cared to claim kin with Mother Sereda before this," says she, pathetically. "There can be no doubt, though, on the point, no possible doubt. Sabellius states it plainly. Artemidorus Minor, I grant you, holds the question debatable, but his reasons for doing so are tolerably notorious. Besides, what does all his flimsy sophistry avail against Nicanor's fine chapter on this very subject? Crushing, I consider it. His logic is final and irrefutable. What can anyone say against Sævius Nicanor?--ah, what indeed?" demanded Jurgen. And he wondered if there might not have been perchance some such persons somewhere, after all. Their names, in any event, sounded very plausible to Jurgen. "Ah, dearie, I was never one for learning. It may be as you say." "You say 'it may be', godmother. That embarrasses me, rather, because I was about to ask for my christening gift, which in the press of other matters you overlooked some forty years back. You will readily conceive that your negligence, however unintentional, might possibly give rise to unkindly criticism: and so I felt I ought to mention it, in common fairness to you." "As for that, dearie, ask what you will within the limits of my power. For mine are all the sapphires and turquoises and whatever else in this dusty world is blue; and mine likewise are all the Wednesdays that have ever been or ever will be: and any one of these will I freely give you in return for your fine speeches and your tender heart." "Ah, but, godmother, would it be quite just for you to accord me so much more than is granted to other persons?"