CHAPTER IV
THE DANGER SIGNAL
That she should meet a real live author, the writer of the book she was reading, was a coincidence strange enough to take Miss Mivvins' breath away. Masters saw her wonderment, smiled at it.
"Is the fact," he asked, "so difficult a thing to reconcile with my appearance?"
"Oh, no, no! How awfully rude you must think me! I meant—I mean—that I expected the author of this book to be——"
Then she paused. Did not quite know what she expected or how to express herself; added lamely:
"To be much older."
"Really! I am sorry I don't come up to your age standard. Age has its privileges, but wisdom is not always its perquisite. Why should an author be necessarily old? Surely youth is pardonable?"
She—a woman famous in her own particular circle for the coolness of her tongue—could have kicked herself. Was saying, in her unwonted nervousness, all the things she would rather have left unsaid. Angry with herself, she blurted out: