Garden parties, tennis tournaments, the Napworth cricket week, claimed
Damaris' attendance in turn, along with agreeable display of her foreign
spoils in the matter of Paris hats and frocks. Proofs arrived in big
envelopes perpetually by post; first in the long, wide-margined galley
form, later in the more dignified one of quire and numbered page. The
crude, sour smell of damp paper and fresh printer's ink, for the first
time assailed our maiden's nostrils. It wasn't nice; yet she sniffed it
with a quaint sense of pleasure. For was it not part of the whole
wonderful, beautiful business of the making of books? To the artist the
meanest materials of his art have a sacredness not to be denied or
ignored. They go to forward the birth of the precious whole, and hence
are redeemed, for him, from all charge of common or uncleanness.
Finally Miss Felicia, arriving in mid-June, paid an unending visit, of
which Damaris felt no impatience. Miss Felicia during the last two years
had, indeed, become a habit.
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