Page:A Literary Courtship (1893).pdf/49

 "Not much," said he, with a sceptical scowl.

"You know she said in the first letter that she hadn't any talents."

"She said she didn't boast any."

"Great Scott! Jack, what a memory you have!"

He was reading the poems with very respectful interest I thought, handing them to me as he finished them. Besides the "Sandpiper," there was a fanciful little love song, a sonnet which I couldn't make much of, and the "Ballad of the Prairie Schooner," which has since become so popular. I could see that Brunt was a good deal impressed, and I didn't wonder. He read them all through several times and then he read the letter again. He always had a way of going on just as though I had not been by, which made everything very free and easy between us.

"Well, what do you think of them?" I asked, when he had had time to take them all in.