Miss Ramsey: "It seems to me as if I had read something of the kind."
Miss Garnett: "Oh yes, the books are full of it. Are those mallows? They might carry off the effects of the chocolates." Miss Ramsey passes her the box of marshmallows which she has bent over the table to look at.
Miss Ramsey: "And of course they couldn't get into the books if they hadn't really happened. I wish I could think of a case in point."
Miss Garnett: "Why, there was Peg Woffington—"
Miss Ramsey, with displeasure: "She was an actress of some sort, wasn't she?"
Miss Garnett, with meritorious candor: "Yes, she was. But she was a very good actress."
Miss Ramsey: "What did she do?"
Miss Garnett: "Well, it's a long time since I read it; and it's rather old-fashioned now. But there was a countryman of some sort, I remember, who came away from his wife, and fell in love with Peg Woffington, and then the wife follows him up to London, and begs her to give him back to her, and she does it. There's something about a portrait of Peg—I don't remember exactly; she puts her face through and cries when the wife talks to the picture. The wife thinks it is a real picture, and she is kind of soliloquizing, and asking Peg to give her husband back to her; and Peg does, in the end. That part is beautiful. They become the greatest friends."
Miss Ramsey: "Rather silly, I should say."
Miss Garnett: "Yes, it is rather silly, but I suppose the author thought she had to do something."