Antonia’s hand did not go forth to meet it, but Aurora, elate and overflowing, was not put off by this.
“I can never tell you”–she gushed, “how pleased I am to meet you–how honored I feel. Nor can I ever tell you how perfectly wonderful I think your books. Perfectly wonderful.... Perfectly wond ... Perf ... See what I’ve brought. These three that I’m going to leave for you to write in, if you’ll be so very kind. It would increase their value for me I never can tell you how much.”
“My dear Madam,” said Antonia, “I never inscribe a book that I have not myself presented. I am not acquainted with the phrase in which it is done. The value of my autograph will be enormously increased hereafter for collectors by the fact that when I receive requests for it I drop them into the waste-basket. Yes, I merely keep the stamps.”
“Oh!”
“Yes.”
“Oh!” more faintly.
“Yes!” more firmly.
Turning her back to Aurora, Antonia once more addressed 161Princess Rostopchine. “Vera Sergeievna, you were saying....”
The only sign Aurora gave of being flabbergasted was forgetting the books she held. They slid with noise to the floor. As Gerald picked them up, “Did I ever tell you”–she asked him chattily, and leisurely moved on,–“about the time I stood on the sidewalk to see the procession go by, in Boston, when we commemorated Bunker Hill?” And she went on with a favorite reminiscence: how she had held on to her inch of standing-room, in spite of a fat and puffing man, a gimlet-elbowed woman, and a policeman.