"I can't say as how I do."
"I am Agnes Graham."
Lizzie was moved to genuine emotion. She rose from her chair in a flutter of excitement. She became more awkward than ever.
"Think of me not knowing you! I ought to, seeing how often I've seen your picture. I beg your pardon, Miss Graham, I'm sure, but won't you take a chair?"
"Thank you, for the present I'll stand." She eyed the other steadfastly; it seemed as if the more she gazed the more her wonder grew. "I'm afraid that I have come to you on a foolish errand, and that you will laugh at me before I've done, if you don't do worse."
"Laugh at you, Miss Graham. That I'm sure I won't."
"May I ask, Miss Emmett, if you know anything of my private history?"
"Me!" The inquiry might have conveyed a reproach, Lizzie's denial was uttered with so much earnestness. "I don't know nothing at all about you, miss, except what's in the papers."
"Except what's in the papers!" Miss Graham smiled, not sunnily. "In that case you know more about me than I do about myself. Still, I am disposed to inflict on you a fragment of personal history. You might not think it, but, in spite of what is in the papers, I'm a dreamer."
"Indeed, miss? I'm a dreamer too."