She looked at him, amazed.
"You are not the Hamilton Beamish? Not the man who wrote the booklets?"
"I have written a few booklets."
"Why, you're my favourite author! If it hadn't been for you I would still be mouldering in a little one-horse town where there wasn't even a good soda-fountain. But I got hold of a couple of your Are You in a Groove? things, and I packed up my grip and came right along to New York to lead a larger life. If I'd known yesterday that you were Hamilton Beamish, I'd have kissed you on the door-step!"
It was Hamilton Beamish's intention to point out that a curtained room with a closed door was an even more suitable place for such a demonstration, but, even as he tried to speak, there gripped him for the first time in his life a strange, almost George Finch-like shyness. One deprecates the modern practice of exposing the great, but candour compels one to speak out and say that at this juncture Hamilton Beamish emitted a simpering giggle and began to twiddle his fingers.
The strange weakness passed, and he was himself again. He adjusted his glasses firmly.
"Would you," he asked, "could you possibly.... Do you think you could manage to come and lunch somewhere to-morrow?"
The girl uttered an exclamation of annoyance.
"Isn't that too bad!" she said. "I can't."
"The day after?"