George raised the letter to his lips and kissed it vigorously.
"Hey, mister!"
George started guiltily. The blush of shame overspread his cheeks.
The room seemed to echo with the sound of that fatuous kiss.
"Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!" he called, snapping his fingers, and
repeating the incriminating noise. "I was just calling my cat," he
explained with dignity. "You didn't see her in there, did you?"
Albert's blue eyes met his in a derisive stare. The lid of the left
one fluttered. It was but too plain that Albert was not convinced.
"A little black cat with white shirt-front," babbled George
perseveringly. "She's usually either here or there, or--or
somewhere. Kitty, Kitty, Kitty!"
The cupid's bow of Albert's mouth parted. He uttered one word.
"Swank!"
There was a tense silence. What Albert was thinking one cannot say.
The thoughts of Youth are long, long thoughts. What George was
thinking was that the late King Herod had been unjustly blamed for
a policy which had been both statesmanlike and in the interests of
the public. He was blaming the mawkish sentimentality of the modern
legal system which ranks the evisceration and secret burial of
small boys as a crime.
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