But, my dear girl," he concluded in a kind of awful reverence, "what a tongue you've got.

It's a jolly good thing for me that I'm your husband or you wouldn't leave me a blessed patch of reputation to my back." His humor held him convulsed for several minutes, during which interval Gerty continued to regard him with her piquant cynicism.
"Well, if it wasn't Madame Alta it was somebody who is voiceless," she retorted coolly.

"I merely meant that there must have been a reason." "Oh, your 'reasons'!" ejaculated Perry.

Then he stooped and gave the letter lying on Gerty's pillow a filip from his large pink forefinger.
"You haven't told me what you think of this ?" he said.
Picking up the letter Gerty unfolded it and read it slowly through from start to finish, the little ripple of sceptical amusement crossing and recrossing her parted lips, RAVENS NEST, Fauquier County, Virginia, December 26, 19--.
_My Dear Perry_: Nobody, of course, ever accused you of being literary, nor, thank Heaven, have I fallen under that aspersion--but since the shortest road to success seems to be by circumvention, it has occurred to me that you might give a social shove or two to the chap who will hand you this letter sometime after the New Year.
His name is St.George Trent, he was born a little way up the turnpike from me, has an enchanting mother, and shows symptoms of being already inoculated with the literary plague.

I never read books, so I have no sense of comparative values in literature, and consequently can't tell whether he is an inglorious Shakespeare or a subject for the daily press.