"Oh!" laughed Mr. Garrott. "Well!—I can't say definitely, at the moment. I'm trying," he said, modestly, "to write books, you know, and it's a slow business, with the little free time I have. My first one, that I've just finished, took me four years."
"Four years! How wonderful! But isn't it going to come out soon?"
"I'm—ah—negotiating with a publisher now."
"It must be fascinating! I—I never knew an author before."
He warmed, expanding.
At the parting of their ways, these two paused, talking like old friends; and no parting took place here, after all. Angela said, with a charming hesitancy: "Mr. Garrott, if you really want to read that book,—'Marna', I mean,—I wish you'd let me lend it to you. We've finished with it—for good!—and if you have time to stop a minute—" And he, who never called, who had a special rule against borrowing things from ladies, restored his hat to his head at once, accepting with pleasure.
So they turned out of Washington Street toward Center, and she continued, with a laughing, sidelong glance:—
"Do you know who Marna reminded me of? Quite a friend of yours!—somebody you admire a great deal!"
Knowing the nature of the book well from the reviews he was incessantly reading, the young man smiled: "I wonder if you can possibly be alluding to one of your most distinguished cousins."
"It did, just a little! At first, I mean—where Marna goes away to lead her own life, and everything.... Mr. Garrott, do you think she's really going to take the position in New York, Cousin Mary, I mean?"