"I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Ghost," said Carol.

"Not Mister," said Ghost. "Just plain Ghost. That is all I am. And the terrible thing about it is that I don't know who I am the ghost of. I'm most pleased to meet you. It is so comfortable with four around the table. There is something nice and balanced in the number four."

"Well," said Oop, "now that we know one another, leave us proceed to business. Let us do some drinking. It's lonesome for a man to drink all by himself. I love Ghost, of course, for his many sterling qualities, but I hate a man who doesn't drink."

"You know I can't drink," said Ghost. "Nor eat, either. Or smoke. There's not much a ghost can do. But I wish you wouldn't keep pointing it out to everyone we meet."

Oop said to Carol, "You seem to be surprised that a barbaric Neanderthaler can sling the language around with the facility I command."

"Not surprised," said Carol. "Astounded."

"Oop," Maxwell told her, "has soaked up more education in the last twelve years than most ordinary men. Started out virtually in kindergarten and now is working on his doctorate. And the thing about it is that he intends to keep right on. He is, you might say, one of our most notable professional students."

Oop raised his arm and waved it, bellowing at a waiter. "Over here," he shouted. "There are people here who wish to patronize you. All dying of slow thirst."

"The thing," said Ghost, "I have always admired about him is his shy, retiring nature."

"I keep on studying," said Oop, "not so much that I hunger after knowledge as for the enjoyment I get from the incredulous astonishment on the faces of those stuffed- shirt professors and those goofy students. Not," he said to Maxwell, "that I maintain all professors are stuffed shirts."