Val seized the opportunity afforded by her father's fit of coughing to consider her audience at an end.
When she came down-stairs from this interview, she found Emmie wandering about disconsolately. Ethan closeted with grandma. No lessons this morning.
"Come," said Val to Emmie, clutching for diversion at their one common interest, "we'll do the magazine."
Emmie got the red and black ink, the fine and the broad nibbed pens, a pile of paper oddments tied with string, and a gigantic ledger, with one of its massive calf-skin covers torn off, revealing the pages, blank at this end, coarse like drawing-paper, and tough, like nothing one sees in these flimsy times—a fabric that, besides never wearing out, had been found to take kindly to the refinements of ornamental printing.
The girls established themselves in the dining-room. After executing the title of Emmie's story in florid Old English lettering, Val did a pen-and-ink sketch of the hero. That gallant individual had started out rather like Harry Wilbur. In this final issue he appeared with Ethan Gano's marked and clear-cut profile, having borrowed from that gentleman not only his tall elegance, but the slight droop of the shoulders and the even more elusive characteristic by means of which, despite the occasional droop, he never lost the air of carrying himself well in some indefinable way.
"Now," said Val, bestowing a finishing touch.
Whereupon, with much gusto, Emmie began to read the last instalment of "The Brown House on the Hill," Val printing at dictation in a rapid, clear italic. The minutes flew. Venus would be coming in presently to set the dinner-table. The clock, chiming the hour, masked the sound of footsteps approaching from the opposite direction. Emmie raised her voice to be heard by the printer above the dozen strokes of noon:
"Ever—and—anon—Archibald—Abalone—murmured—in—Editha's—ear:—'Angel—I—adore—thee.'"
"What nonsense is that you are reading?" said Mrs. Gano, in the sudden silence.