Her face lit up; she turned to him with a livelier expression than usual.
"Yes, I think I can fairly say I have finished it," she said.

"That is, omitting Swinburne--Beowulf to Browning--I rather like the two B's myself.

Beowulf to Browning," she repeated, "I think that is the kind of title which might catch one's eye on a railway book-stall." She was indeed very proud that she had finished her book, for no one knew what an amount of determination had gone to the making of it.

Also she thought that it was a good piece of work, and, considering what anxiety she had been in about her brother while she wrote it, she could not resist telling them a little more about it.
"I must confess," she continued, "that if I had known how many classics there are in English literature, and how verbose the best of them contrive to be, I should never have undertaken the work.

They only allow one seventy thousand words, you see." "Only seventy thousand words!" Terence exclaimed.
"Yes, and one has to say something about everybody," Miss Allan added.
"That is what I find so difficult, saying something different about everybody." Then she thought that she had said enough about herself, and she asked whether they had come down to join the tennis tournament.