"This fellow Field? Ah, who indeed?" said she. "That's just what I wish you'd tell me."
"I'll tell you with pleasure, after you've supplied me with the necessary data," he promised cheerfully.
"Well, by some accounts, he's a little literary man in London," she remarked.
"Oh, come! You never imagined that I was a little literary man in London," protested he.
"You might be worse," she retorted. "However, if the phrase offends you, I'll say a rising young literary man, instead. He writes things, you know."
"Poor chap, does he? But then, that's a way they have, sizing up literary persons?" His tone was interrogative.
"Doubtless," she agreed. "Poems and stories and things. And book reviews, I suspect. And even, perhaps, leading articles in the newspapers."
"Toute la lyre enfin? What they call a penny-a-liner?"
"I'm sure I don't know what he's paid. I should think he'd get rather more than a penny. He's fairly successful. The things he does aren't bad," she said.
"I must look 'em up," said he. "But meantime, will you tell me how you came to mistake me for him? Has he the Chinese type? Besides, what on earth should a little London literary man be doing at the Countess Wohenhoffen's?"