“By-the-bye,” questioned the mandarin, “if you don’t mind increasing my stores of knowledge, who is this fellow Field?”
“This fellow Field? Ah, who indeed?” said she. “That’s just what I wish you’d tell me.”
“I’ll tell you with pleasure, after you’ve supplied me with the necessary data,” he promised cheerfully.
“Well, by some accounts, he’s a little literary man in London,” she remarked.
“Oh, come! You never imagined that I was a little literary man in London,” protested he.
“You might be worse,” she retorted. “However, if the phrase offends you, I’ll say a rising young literary man, instead. He writes things, you know.”
“Poor chap, does he? But then, that’s a way they have, rising young literary persons?” His tone was interrogative.
“Doubtless,” she agreed. “Poems and stories and things. And book reviews, I suspect. And even, perhaps, leading articles in the newspapers.”
“Toute la lyre enfin? What they call a penny-a-liner?”
“I’m sure I don’t know what he’s paid. I should think he’d get rather more than a penny. He’s fairly successful. The things he does aren’t bad,” she said.