"Oh, nothing," after a little pause—"however I doubt that any one, male or female, can take up pen for the first time and tell a tale like a practised writer."
"Of course not. The practised writer has a style of his own, a conventional narrative style which may be very far from nature. People in books very seldom talk as they do in real life. When people in books begin to talk like human beings the reader thinks the dialogue either commonplace or mildly realistic, and votes it a bore."
"Then why try to write as one talks? Why not cultivate the conventional style of the practised writer?"
"Why talk commonplaces?" cried Paul a little tartly. "Of course most people must do so if they talk at all, and they are usually the people who talk all the time. But I have known people whose ordinary conversation was extraordinary, and worth putting down in a book—every word of it."
"In my experience," said Miss. Juno, "people who talk like books are a burden."
"They needn't talk like the conventional book, I tell you. Let them have something to say and say it cleverly—that is the kind of conversation to make books of."
"What if all that we've been saying here, under the rose, as it were, were printed just as we've said it?"
"What if it were? It would at least be natural, and we've been saying something of interest to each other; why should it not interest a third party?"
Miss. Juno smiled and rejoined, "I am not a confirmed eavesdropper, but I often find myself so situated that I cannot avoid overhearing what other people are saying to one another; it is seldom that, under such circumstances, I hear anything that interests me."
"Yes, but if you knew the true story of those very people, all that they may be saying in your hearing would no doubt possess an interest, inasmuch as it would serve to develop their history."