MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

other side of me from Miss Midland usually sits an old German, grubbing away atSanskrit roots. The other day we got into talk in the little lunchroom here in the samebuilding with the library, where all we readers go to feed, and he made me so mad Icouldn't digest my bread and milk. Once, just once, when he was real young, he met anAmerican woman student—a regular P. G. freak, I gather—and nothing will convincehim that all American girls aren't like her. 'May God forgive Christopher Columbus!' hegroans whenever he thinks of her...."There was no more in this letter about his English neighbor, but in the next, written aweek later, he said:"We've struck up an acquaintance, the discouraged-looking English girl and I, and sheisn't so frozen-up as she seems. This is how it happened. I told you about the littlelunchroom where the readers from the library get their noonday feed. Well, a day or soago I was sitting at the next table to her, and when she'd finished eating and felt for herpurse, I saw her get pale, and I knew right off she'd lost her money. 'If you'll excuse me,Miss Midland,' I said, 'I'll be glad to loan you a little. My name is Harrison, PeterHarrison, and I usually sit next you in the reading-room.' Say, Maggie, you don't knowhow queerly she looked at me. I can't tell you what her expression was like, for I couldn'tmake head or tail out of it. It was like looking at a Hebrew book that you don't knowwhether to read backward or forward. She got whiter, and drew away and said somethingabout 'No! No! she couldn't think——' But there stood the waiter with his hand out. I