“Sixteen.... You mustn’t think my father was a—a bad father. I really loved him very much. He wanted to take care of his family, but he just didn’t know how. I had to take things into my own hands. I persuaded him to borrow the money for our first car. That year we paid for it, and I made him borrow the money to buy another, and let me run it. Well—we made lots of money, and now we’ve five cars—so that’s all right.... I don’t know why I got off the track and told you all this stuff. You wanted to know about me and Clive.” “Yes, then Clive came along?” “He had been there all the time—only he never saw me. Why should he? I don’t think he ever would have seen me, if one night when I was driving him home I hadn’t noticed that he was carrying an interesting-looking book with a white label. I glanced at it rather obviously. He held it up, and asked me if I had ever read any of Bernard Shaw’s plays. I was scared to death—I had wanted to talk to him for two years, and here was my chance. I had to make good. Of course, I’d never read anything of Shaw’s, but what did that matter? It was my chance to prove to him that I was worth talking to. So I swallowed hard, and said, yes, I’d read everything I could find of Shaw’s. I knew if he asked me any questions, I could say, no, I hadn’t been able to get hold of that yet.... Well, it worked. And that night—the library was closed, but I knew the librarian and I made him go there with me and open it up long enough for me to get the only two volumes of Shaw the library had. I read one of them that night and the other the next day. I liked them, too, though they did seem a little queer to me at the very first....” “What were they?” Felix asked.