The others resented
postponement, but it was just his scruples that charmed me.
I adjured him to write by the first post and to agree with us
for an early hearing; then I asked him if the experience
in question had been his own. To this his answer was prompt.
"Oh, thank God, no!"
"And is the record yours? You took the thing down?"
"Nothing but the impression. I took that HERE"--he tapped his heart.
"I've never lost it."
"Then your manuscript--?"
"Is in old, faded ink, and in the most beautiful hand." He hung
fire again. "A woman's. She has been dead these twenty years.
She sent me the pages in question before she died."
They were all listening now, and of course there was somebody
to be arch, or at any rate to draw the inference. But if he put
the inference by without a smile it was also without irritation.
"She was a most charming person, but she was ten years older
than I. She was my sister's governess," he quietly said.
"She was the most agreeable woman I've ever known in her position;
she would have been worthy of any whatever. It was long ago,
and this episode was long before. I was at Trinity,
and I found her at home on my coming down the second summer.
I was much there that year--it was a beautiful one; and we had,
in her off-hours, some strolls and talks in the garden--
talks in which she struck me as awfully clever and nice.
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