"She was able to rush on and pick them up as they were dashed against a lamp-post"
When she had the papers safely in her possession, Julia naturally looked around to see to whom they belonged. The owner was not far away, for just a few steps behind her was an old gentleman, not very tall, dressed all in black with a high silk hat. Under his arm he carried a book, and as he held out his hand towards her Julia had no doubt that he was the owner of the wandering manuscript.
"Thank you, my child," he said, as she held the sheets towards him. "Another gust, and I should have had to compose a new poem to take the place of the one that was so ready to—go to press against that lamp-post.
"There, that was not a very brilliant pun, was it?" he asked, for Julia now was walking along by his side.
"Why, sir," she had begun to say, looking up in his face. Then suddenly she gave a start. Surely she had seen that face before! But where? Yet almost in a shorter time than I have taken to tell it, she recognized the owner of the papers. He was certainly no other than Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, the famous Autocrat of the Breakfast table, several of whose poems she knew almost by heart. All her old shyness came back to her, she did not exactly dare to say that she recognized him, and all she could think of was another question in relation to the manuscript. "Were—were they some of your own poems?" she managed to stammer, "it would have been dreadful if they had been lost."
"Not half as dreadful," he replied smiling, "as if they had been written by some one else. As a matter of fact these were sent me by an unfledged poet who wished me to tell him whether he would stand a chance of getting them into a publisher's hands. He told me to take great care of them as he had no copy. I read his note at my publisher's just now, and I felt bound to carry the manuscript home. But I'm not sure that it would not have been a good thing to lose a sheet or two to teach him a lesson. He should not send a thing to a stranger without making a copy."
The poet of course did not speak to Julia in precisely these words, but this was the drift of what he said, and it was in about this form that she repeated it to her aunt and Brenda at the luncheon table.
"What else did he say?" her aunt had asked, with great interest.
"Oh, he thanked me again for picking up the papers, complimented me for being so sure-footed on such a slippery sidewalk, and what do you think, Aunt Anna, when he heard that I had not long been in Boston, he asked me to call some afternoon to see him. He is always at home after four. I walked along until he reached his door step. Do you know that he lives very near here. I was so surprised to find it out. Have you ever been there, Brenda?"