"You go to your lectures still at the U? You don't stay in this shop all day?"
"No. I'm done with that place. I'm going to smoke. You needn't make a fuss; everyone's used to it here."
"Perhaps this will be better than writing away on a novel," Emily was thinking. She didn't want to seem to look too inquisitively at Martha. She played about with her tea; she called Martha's attention to the couple who had entered. "Why is it," she asked, to break the silence, "that the more expensive the fur coat, the fatter the woman inside it?"
But Martha broke forth abruptly, "I've burned my novel up!"
Emily was sharply stung by the bitterness of that confession. She had always wanted that novel burned up, but she hadn't wanted Martha to be so hurt by its destruction.
"Why, Martie? What did you do that for?"
"I needn't have been so hasty! I've got most of it—in rough form. I could put it all together again; but it would be an awful lot of work."
"You worked on it nearly a year."
"Yes, I had. And if I'd known everything then I know now, I wouldn't have burned it up, you can bet! I typed it all over without a mistake, from beginning to end; it had seventy thousand words."
"Goodness!" Emily murmured, impressed.