"If my book ever takes body, my friend, it will be under your roof, where
you and yours can vitalize it. This is no fishing for invitations--we
know each other too frankly well for that. What I wish to do is to come
into your neighbourhood next springtime, without encroaching on your
hospitality, and work some hours every day in the library, or that corner
of her charmed attic that Barbara has shared with me. It is bewitching.
Upon my word, I do not wonder that she sees the world rose-colour as she
looks upon it from that window. I, too, had long reveries there, in which
experience and tradition mixed themselves so cleverly that for the time I
could not tell whether it was my father or myself who had sometimes
proudly escorted the lovely Carroll sisters upon their afternoon
promenade down Broadway, from Prince Street to the Bowling Green, each
leading her pet greyhound by a ribbon leash, or which of us it was that,
in seeking to recapture an escaping hound, was upset by it in the mud, to
the audible delight of some rivals in a 'bus and his own discomfiture,
being rendered thereby unseemly for the beauty's further company."
* * * * *
"January 20, 19--.
"Thank you, dear Richard, for your brotherly letter. I make no
protestations, for I know your invitation would not be given if you felt
my presence would in any way be a drawback or impose care on any member
of your household, and the four little hearts that Barbara drew, with her
own, Evan's, and the boys' initials in them, are seals upon the
invitation.
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