"Multiply that three by three-times-three! And now tell me--"

But this was too much.

"My dear," I protested, "I recollect exactly. It was--"

"No, I don't believe you do. I cannot trust you at all with beans.
But I should like to know why you plant ten or twelve kinds of beans
when the only kind we like are limas!"

"Why--the--catalogue advises--"

"Yes, the catalogue advises--"

"You don't seem to understand, my dear, that--"

"Now, _why_ don't I understand?"

I paused. This is always a hard question, and peculiarly hard as the
end of a series, and on a topic as difficult as beans. I don't know
beans. There is little or nothing about beans in the history of
philosophy or in poetry. Thoreau says that when he was hoeing his
beans it was not beans that he hoed nor he that hoed beans--which was
the only saying that came to mind at the moment, and under the
circumstances did not seem to help me much.

"Well," I replied, fumbling among my stock of ready-made reasons,
"I--really--don't--know exactly why you don't understand. Indeed, I
really don't know--that _I_ exactly understand. _Everything_ is full
of things that even I can't understand--how to explain my tendency to