“It’s a fact. At first Minerva (she’s the lady that ushered you in) contributed daily to our amusement and excitement, but now she’s getting to be semi-occasional, and so we’re thinking of our friends who don’t hate the country, and you may be in quite a congested community before you have a chance to go. You play tennis, don’t you?”
“I used to when I was a boy.”
“Oh, don’t say that. We’re all boys and girls up here. We expect to set up a court to-morrow and there’ll be four of us to play.”
“Have you written much lately?” asked Ethel.
It was curious to see the extra animation that came into Sibthorp’s face at her question. Tennis had left him cold, but the mention of the works of Sibthorp roused him.
It is the fashion to laugh at this tendency in writers, but I have a dim suspicion that the engineer is roused to greater interest at mention of some engineering problem he has solved, than he is at the ordinary topics of the day, and so it is with all.
“Had something accepted last week,” said he. “It had been everywhere, and if it had come back again, I would have burned it up, but the Atlantic took it, and the only reason I didn’t send there at first was because I thought it wasn’t good enough.”
“How proud we must be.”
“Well, it’s funny, but as soon as the Atlantic took it, I went and got my carbon copy and read it, and I thought it was pretty good, and when it had come back time before, I had read it, and thought it was rotten.”
“And when it’s printed, there’ll be as many opinions of it as it has readers. But you’re progressing if the Atlantic takes you up. Doesn’t it make you feel sorry to see the goal?”