"Well," I said (I felt a little contrite, as I was sincerely
sorry to have offended him), "I've passed forty myself in some
measurements, so youth no longer has any terrors for me."

He looked at me rather comically.

"My dear madam," he said, "your age is precisely eighteen. I think
that if we escape the clutches of the Sage of Redfield you may
really begin to live."

"Oh, Andrew's not a bad sort," I said. "He's absentminded, and hot
tempered, and a little selfish. The publishers have done their best
to spoil him, but for a literary man I guess he's quite human. He
rescued me from being a governess, and that's to his credit. If only
he didn't take his meals quite so much as a matter of course...."

"The preposterous thing about him is that he really can _write_,"
said Mifflin. "I envy him that. Don't let him know I said so, but
as a matter of fact his prose is almost as good as Thoreau. He
approaches facts as daintily as a cat crossing a wet road."

"You should see him at dinner," I thought; or rather I meant to
think it, but the words slipped out. I found myself thinking aloud
in a rather disconcerting way while sitting with this strange
little person.

He looked at me. I noticed for the first time that his eyes were
slate blue, with funny birds' foot wrinkles at the corners.

"That's so," he said. "I never thought of that. A fine prose style