And I was just wonderin' how I could relieve my feelin's without eatin' a fuzzy worm, like the small boy that nobody loved, when I hears footsteps approachin' through the shrubb'ry. I looks up, to find myself bein' inspected by a weedy, long legged youth. He's an odd lookin' kid, with dull reddish hair, so many freckles that his face looks rusty, and a pair of big purple black eyes that gazes at me serious. "Well, son," says I, "where did you drop from?" "My name is Harold Burbank Fitzmorris," says he, "and I am visiting with my mother on the adjoining estate." "That sounds like a full description, Harold," says I. "Did you stray off, or was you sent?" "I trust you don't mind," says he; "but I am exploring." "Explore away then," says I, "so long as you don't tramp through the flowerbeds." "Oh, I wouldn't think of injuring them," says he. "I am passionately fond of flowers." "You don't say!" says I. "Yes," says Harold, droppin' down easy on the bench alongside of me. "I love Nature in all her moods. I am a poet, you know." "Eh!" says I. "Ain't you beginning sort of young?" "Nearly all the really great men of literature," comes back Harold as prompt as if he was speakin' a piece, "have begun their careers by writing verse. I presume mine might be considered somewhat immature; but I am impelled from within to do it. All that will pass, however, when I enter on my serious work." "Oh, then you've got a job on the hook, have you!" says I. "I expect," says Harold, smilin' sort of indulgent and runnin' his fingers careless through his thick coppery hair, "to produce my first novel when I am twenty. It will have a somber theme, something after the manner of Turgenieff. Do you not find Turgenieff very stimulating?" "Harold," says I, "all them Hungarian wines are more or less heady, and a kid like you shouldn't monkey with any of 'em." He looks almost pained at that. "You're chaffing me now, I suppose," says he. "That sort of thing, though, I never indulge in. Humor, you know, is but froth on the deep seas of thought. It has never seemed to me quite worth one's while. You will pardon my frankness, I know." "Harold," says I, "you're a wizard. So it's nix on the josh, eh?" "What singular metaphors you employ!" says he. "Do you know, I can hardly follow you. However, colloquial language does not offend my ear. It is only when I see it in print that I shudder." "Me too," says I. "I'm just as sore on these foreign languages as anyone. So you're visitin' next door, eh? Enjoyin' yourself?" That was a plain cue for Harold Burbank to launch out on the story of his life; but, say, he didn't need any such encouragement. He was a willin' and ready converser, Harold was; and--my!--what a lot of classy words he did have on tap! First off I wondered how it was a youngster like him could dig up so many; but when I'd heard a little more about him I could account for it all.