“But I suppose you pulled me out of the gutter, made a gentleman out of me?”
Rothering laughed until I thought the walls would collapse. “Oh, William, the day someone makes a gentleman out of you is the day Roosevelt walks. It’s true, though, for what it’s worth, that I pulled you off the street. I never met a more eager receptacle for knowledge. I would expound upon the Führer’s philosophy to you for hours, and you would always ask for more. You lack a certain zeal and passion that I prefer in my disciples, but no one can fault you your voracious curiosity. I recall when we moved here, you spent quite a bit of time at that rundown old library, and you did so love to use what you would colloquially call ‘fifty-cent words.’ But that was kind of a show.”
“I lived in the Mat,” I said.
“You
