Page:O Genteel Lady! (1926).pdf/74

 greatest of Boston's literary men were apt to gather, talk, smoke, and enjoy their own and each other's wit and wisdom. Here Thackeray and Dickens had both held informal salons, and Whittier with his quaint 'thees' and 'thous,' Emerson, Longfellow, and Hawthorne all were habitués.

She entered by a narrow door crowded in beside the shop, and ascended to the editorial rooms. Extraordinary clutter! Files of magazines, their own and those of their rivals, piles of bound books, and books in 'sheets,' proofs, filing devices, and an odd assortment of intelligent-looking human beings gave the place a professional and literary appearance, confusing to the lay mind.

From the main room (once, Lanice judged, the dining-room of the mansion) cubby-holes and staircases radiated in all directions. On the walls were original drawings framed and unframed, autographs, maps, colored reproductions, and even hand-tinted fashion plates from 'Hearth and Home.' Lovely mincing things, exquisitely engraved and colored by hand. A very big little boy with a double chin swaggered forward to meet her.

'Miss Bardeen, I suppose? Mr. Fox expects you. He'll be free in a moment. Dr. Holmes is with him just now.' She caught a glimpse of the rare soul's little back slipping down a back stairway.

Mr. Fox graciously came to meet her.

'You are not, I see, merely a pleasant hallucination brought on by Mrs. Morgan's speech and the Captain's Madeira, but an actual young lady looking for