"I never heard of anything so silly," I said, "You're making it all up!"
Wright laughed.
"I'm not, truly," he said, "although perhaps I have rendered it in a slightly more lurid manner than you did. But it's true, and I'm going to ask Bill what it's all about, so there!"
"Don't you dare!" I said.
"All right, I won't, if you will promise me never to blush again like you have been doing for the last three minutes. It is very disturbing, to a struggling poet who has long sought fresher similes for Dawn and all that sort of thing. You provided the simile, all right, but who in time could rhyme with Mavis?"
At the mention of poetry, my hand unconsciously went toward the sheet of paper beside me. The orange rolled away and the wind provokingly caught the paper and fluttered it.
"What's this?" said the audacious youth beside me. "Ha! I see Bill's fine Italian hand in this—"
He picked up the paper, regardless of my pleas, and scanned it with a practised eye.
"Your writing. Amanuensis now, eh? Hm—that doesn't sound like Bill. Wait a moment, I never saw such illegible calligraphy. At least one member of a doctor's family ought to write so a fellow can read it—"
He laid the paper down.