Notwithstanding the literary odor with which Mr. Lindsley sprayed
himself as he sprayed his handkerchief with a domestic scent called
"Sesame and Lilies," his neoclassic determination to write the American
_Iliad_ must have died painlessly when his iambically disposed feet
ventured too deeply into the quagmire of pedagogy, from which he was not
to emerge. But for the first time in her life Lilly was hearing her name
pronounced by one who rolled it under his tongue like a lollypop. He
rolled all names quite so, but in her beatitude she was only conscious
of her own as it candied. Besides, his eyes, through the pince-nez, had
a gimlet, goosefleshing quality; he recited "Straits of Dover" to a
class of young women with rapt adenoidal expression when he should have
been inoculating them with the bitter serum of Burke's Conciliation
Speech, and walked to school of wintry mornings without an overcoat;
skates and the _Areopagitica_ under his arm.
It was undeniable that at this stage Lilly had veered unaccountably to
authorship, her after-school practice hour gouged into by a suddenly
stimulated pen.
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