"Yes."
"And would you mind telling me her name?"
I obliged him.
"I don't remember to have heard of her. I didn't think of that name once as I lay upon the hill. Things don't turn out as one might expect. Now, I would have thought—but it's no matter."
For a moment or so he was lost in thought, and then he spoke again: "You were writing when I came into the room?"
"Nothing important."
The boy ran his fingers in his hair and threw out his arms impatiently. "That's what I would like to do. I am in college, and I try for one of the papers. But my stuff comes back. But this summer in the vacation, I am working in an office. I run errands and when there is nothing else to do, I study a big invoice book, so as to get the names of things that are bought. There is a racket of drays and wagons outside the windows, and along in the middle of the afternoon I get tired and thick in my head. But I write Saturday afternoons and Sunday mornings."
The boy stopped and fixed his eyes on me. "I don't suppose that you happen to be a poet?"
"Not at all," I replied. "But perhaps you are one. Tell me about it!"
The boy took a turn at the fire with the poker, but it was chiefly in embarrassment. Presently he returned to his chair. He stretched his long arms upward above his head.