Harbor Castle she was speaking, but of myself. It was one evening
about two weeks after we had met, and I had side-stepped the
Lowells and was motoring with Polly alone. We were talking of our
favorite authors, dead and alive.

"You may laugh," said Polly, and she said it defiantly, "and I
don't know whether you would call him among the dead or the living,
but I am very fond of Fletcher Farrell!"

My heart leaped. I was so rattled that I nearly ran the car into a
stone wall. I thought I was discovered and that Polly was playing
with me. But her next words showed that she was innocent. She did
not know that the man to whom she was talking and of whom she was
talking were the same. "Of course you will say," she went on, "that
he is too romantic, that he is not true to life. But I never lived
in the seventeenth century, so I don't know whether he is true to
life or not. And I like romance. The life I lead in the store gives
me all the reality I want. I like to read about brave men and great
and gracious ladies."

I never met any girls like those Farrell write about, but it's nice
to think they exist. I wish I were like them. And, his men,
too--they make love better than any other man I ever read about."

"Better than I do?" I asked.

Polly gazed at the sky, frowning severely. After a pause, and as
though she had dropped my remark into the road and the wheels had
crushed it, she said, coldly, "Talking about books----"