"The story of Hawthorne and the first edition—"
"Hypothetical. Grouse in the gun-room."
"Do you mean that the story of the old slave who came to your mother's door in Waltham, and the three abolitionists on their way to the meeting—"
"Now what's the use, Billy Stark?" cried the old lady. "I told you it was a fake from beginning to end. So it is. So is every page of it. If I'd written my recollections as they were, the book would have been a pamphlet of twenty odd pages. It would have said I married a learned professor because I thought if I got into Cambridge society I should see life, and life was what I wanted. It would have gone on to say I found it death and nothing else, and when my husband died I spent all the money I could get trying to see life and I never saw it then. Who'd have printed that? Pretty recollections, I should say!"
Mr. Stark was still musing, his eyes interrogating her.
"It's really incredible, Florrie," he said at last. "Poor dear! you needed the money."
"That wasn't it."
"Then what was?"
"I don't know." But immediately her face folded up into its smiling creases and she said, "I wanted some fun."
William Stark fell back in his chair and began to laugh, round upon wheezy round. When his glasses had fallen off and his cheeks were wet and his face flamed painfully, Madam Fulton spoke, without a gleam.