Page:Carroll - Sylvie and Bruno Concluded.djvu/154

"Well, of course, when you hear any one talk fluently——you, for instance——you can see how desperately un-shy she is——not to say saucy! But the shyest and most intermittent talker must seem fluent in letter-writing. He may have taken half-an-hour to compose his second sentence; but there it is, close after the first!"

"Then letters don't express all that they might express?"

"That's merely because our system of letter-writing is incomplete. A shy writer ought to be able to show that he is so. Why shouldn't he make pauses in writing, just as he would do in speaking? He might leave blank spaces——say half a page at a time. And a very shy girl——if there is such a thing——might write a sentence on the first sheet of her letter——then put in a couple of blank sheets——then a sentence on the fourth sheet: and so on."

"1 quite foresee that we——I mean this clever little boy and myself——" Lady Muriel said to me, evidently with the kind wish to bring me into the conversation, "——are going to become famous——of course all our inventions are