The confidential man (beginning to lose his patience, at last): "About? Why, it was about a lot of things!"
Miss V.: "Was it fiction—a novel?"
The confidential man: "Huh?"
Miss V.: "Was it a story? or a book of travels—"
(The confidential man gazes at her with oystery eyes. Suddenly he becomes more animated.)
The confidential man: "There! It looked just like that!"
(He points across the desk at a novel bound in the uniform style of the library bindery, from which six thousand volumes, bound precisely alike, come every year.)
Miss V.: "Is that it?" (She hands him the book.)
The confidential man: "No, no. Oh, no. Nothin' like it." (He puts it down, and wanders away, thinking that he will come back when there is some intelligent attendant at the desk.)
An excited person: "Look here, I've been reading those names on the ceiling, and Longfellow's isn't there! Now, I'd like to know why that is!"