“Account!” exclaimed Ferris, contemptuously; “account! yes, they have to account.”
“But they account to me,” Miss Moyne gently insisted.
“Who are your publishers?” he demanded.
“George Dunkirk & Co.,” was the answer.
“Well,” said he, “I’ll wager you anything I can come within twenty of guessing the sales up to date of your book. It has sold just eleven hundred and forty copies.”
She laughed merrily and betrayed the dangerous closeness of his guess by coloring a little.
“Oh, its invariably just eleven hundred and forty copies, no matter what kind of a book it is, or what publisher has it,” he continued; “I’ve investigated and have settled the matter.”
The historian was suddenly thoughtful, little Mrs. Philpot appeared to be making some abstruse calculation, Crane was silently gazing at the ground and Peck, with grim humor in his small eyes, remarked that eleven hundred and forty was a pretty high average upon the whole.
Just at this point a figure appeared in the little roadway where it made its last turn lapsing from the wood toward the hotel. A rather tall, slender and angular young woman, bearing a red leather bag in one hand and a blue silk umbrella in the other, strode forward with the pace of a tragedienne. She wore a bright silk dress, leaf-green in color, and a black bonnet, of nearly the Salvation Army pattern, was set far back on her head, giving full play to a mass of short, fine, loosely tumbled yellow hair.