Her husband turned on her an inspired eye. “There’s only one way that I know of,” he imperturbably declared, “and that’s to stay out here till I learn how to paint them.”
“COPY”
A DIALOGUE
Mrs. Ambrose Dale—forty, slender, still young—sits in her drawing-room at the tea-table. The winter twilight is falling, a lamp has been lit, there is a fire on the hearth, and the room is pleasantly dim and flower-scented. Books are scattered everywhere—mostly with autograph inscriptions “From the Author”—and a large portrait of Mrs. Dale, at her desk, with papers strewn about her, takes up one of the wall-panels. Before Mrs. Dale stands Hilda, fair and twenty, her hands full of letters.
Mrs. Dale. Ten more applications for autographs? Isn’t it strange that people who’d blush to borrow twenty dollars don’t scruple to beg for an autograph?
Hilda (reproachfully). Oh—
Mrs. Dale. What’s the difference, pray?
Hilda. Only that your last autograph sold for fifty—
Mrs. Dale (not displeased). Ah?—I sent for you, Hilda, because I’m dining out to-night, and if there’s nothing important to attend to among these letters you needn’t sit up for me.
Hilda. You don’t mean to work?
Mrs. Dale. Perhaps; but I sha’n’t need you. You’ll see that my cigarettes and coffee-machine are in place, and that I don’t have to crawl about the floor in search of my pen-wiper? That’s all. Now about these letters—