“Not exactly! I think the warm weather makes me languid.” “More likely overexcited nerves. You must learn to take life more philosophically. But we won’t talk shop!” We were bowling along at a fine rate. The doctor drove fast, blooded horses, and liked to handle the ribbons himself. The day was deliciously fresh, the air sweet with early roses and honeysuckle. I called his attention, in passing Conway Robinson’s grounds, to the perfume of violets rising in almost visible waves from a ravine where the grass was whitened by them as with a light fall of snow. I asked no questions as we turned down Capitol Street, and thence into Main Street. Sometimes I sat in the carriage while he paid a professional call. This might be his intention now. We brought up abruptly at Morris’s book-store, and the blesséd man leaped out and held his hand to me. He probably had an errand there. He handed me into the interior in his brisk way, and marched straight up to Mr. Morris, who advanced to meet us. “Good-morning! I have come for a copy of this young lady’s book!” If I had ever fainted, I should have swooned on the spot. For there, in heaps and heaps upon the front counter—in bindings of dark-blue, and purple, and crimson, and leaf-brown—lay in lordly state, portly volumes, on the backs of which, in gleaming gold that shimmered and shook before my incredulous vision, was stamped: “ALONE.” I saw, through the sudden dazzlement of the whole world about me, that a clerk had set a chair for me. I sat down gratefully. Mr. Morris was talking: “Opened this morning! I sent six copies up to you. I suppose you got them?” “No!” I tried so hard to say it firmly that it sounded careless. I would have added, “I did not know it was out,” but dared not attempt a sentence. Mr. Morris attended us to the door to point to placards a porter was tacking to boards put there for that express purpose: JUST OUT!! ALONE! By Marion Harland The doctor nodded satisfiedly and handed me into the carriage. In taking my seat, I thought, in a dull, sick way, of Bruce at the source of the Nile. I had had day-dreams of this day and hour a thousand times in the last ten years. Of how I should walk down-town some day, and see a placard at this very door bearing the title of a novel written and bound, and lettered in gilt, and PUBLISHED! bearing my pen-name! The vision was a reality; the dream was a triumphant fulfilment. And I was sitting, unchanged, and non-appreciative, by the dear old doctor, and his full, cordial tones were saying of the portly purple volume lying on the seat between us: “Well, my dear child, I congratulate you, and I hope a second edition will be called for within six months!”