"Perhaps I’m being too inquisitive?" she suggested gently. This is only another way of getting one’s question answered. You might call it the question circumspect and, by borrowing from another’s wit, mark the distinction between it and the question direct. But it is not so much the name that matters, as its effectiveness. In a moment, John was all apologies for his silence. "Inquisitive? No! It’s only the new sensation." "What new sensation?" "Somebody wanting to know something about oneself. On the other side of the street where I live, there resides a parrot; and every Sunday they put him outside on the window-sill, and there he keeps calling out--’Do you want to know who I am? Do you want to know who I am?’ And crowds of little boys and little girls, and idle men and lazy women, stand down below his cage in the street and imitate him in order to get him to say it again. ’Do you want to know who I am, Polly?’ they call out. And oh, my goodness, it’s so like life. They never reply--’Who are you, then?’ But every single one of them must ask him if he wants to know who they are, just when he’s longing to tell them all about himself. It is like life you know." "What nice little stories you tell. I believe you make them up as you go along--but they’re quite nice. So that’s the new sensation?" "Yes--that’s it. Someone, at last, has said ’Who are you, then?’ And I hardly know where to begin." "Well, I asked you why your father didn’t marry till your mother was forty. You said she was forty."