“What supernatural insight,” she mocked. “Can you read your name between the lines?”
“What is it that you want me to do?”
“You mean to ask what it is that Mr. Rossetti wants you to do. I didn’t write the sonnet, you know.”
“You didn’t fashion the arrow, but you aimed it.”
“Am I a good marksman?”
“I suppose you mean that I’m wasting my time here.”
“Surely not!” she gibed. “Forming a link of transcontinental traffic. Helping to put a girdle ‘round the earth in eighty days—or is it forty now?—enlightening the traveling public about the three-twenty-four train; dispensing time-tables and other precious mediums of education—”
“I’m happy here,” he said doggedly.
“Are you going to be, always?”
His face darkened with doubt. “Why shouldn’t I be?” he argued. “I’ve got everything I need. Some day I thought I might write.”