“Stoddard—a professional Cassandra—taking fake biology and distorted history—milking gullible buyers of books for fat royalties!” Meekins half-shouted, forgetting social amenities in his anger. Jimmie flushed a deep brick-red and relapsed into a moody silence. “But Mrs. Forrester’s right,” Meekins went on, “They are tearing down all they’ve built and they’re creating new instruments of destruction that’ll wipe out faster than industrialism can produce.”
“There was a story in the Times last week,” Mimi interjected, glad to find support for her statement, though she loyally resented Meekins’ abrupt discourtesy towards Jimmie, “telling of the invention of a new electric ray so powerful it can wipe out every living thing, even to blades of grass, within a radius of twenty miles. A man presses a little button—zip!—and everything’s dead. Soon they’ll make it fifty miles, then a hundred, then a thousand—”
“Oh, come on,” Jimmie pleaded. “It’s too nice a night to be so doleful—let’s go to a cabaret.” …
To Mimi’s surprise Meekins proved an excellent dancer and a jovial companion, even Jimmie laughing with reluctance at his witticisms. When they returned home and were preparing for bed, she commented on Meekins’ joviality. “Humph! About as funny as a baby breaking its leg,” was Jimmie’s comment. Mimi knew he was thinking of the way in which Meekins had stuck to his contentions, which, she was aware from experience, had not been altogether pleasing to Jimmie. All of us hate to hear unpleasant truths, she thought forgivingly. “He’s just the sort of damn fool who’d shout ‘Three cheers for the Ku Klux Klan!’ at a Knights of Columbus picnic!” was Jimmie’s final verdict as he turned out the light and climbed into bed. …