And Kate had to bear with Hugh.

He had a maddening habit of casting forth the match with which he lighted his pipe.

He would sit at a table surrounded with match-holders of every variety—one Christmas Kate had put six of the latest novelties in this line in his sock—and he would strike a light, and then thoughtlessly throw the dead match either towards the window or the fireplace.

When Fortune smiled so marvellously on Hugh, one of the first things he did was to go down to the city, and with his own hands take down the strip of painted tin that, in a building of offices, announced “Miss Kinross, Typist.”

He was on the verge of following this act by dropping the typewriter out of the window, when Kate came in just in time to point out to him that some one might be passing beneath, and so receive a worse headache from the thing than it had ever given her. She accepted, as wholeheartedly as he gave it, an income of two hundred a year from him. But she clung to her old typewriter, and copied lovingly all his stories for him.

ANTE-PRANDIAL VISITORS

He looked and beheld a small maiden clad in a holland frock, with a white linen hat on the back of her gold-brown curls, instead of being set in orthodox fashion upon her head. Her white shoes and socks, fresh with the morning, were a little reddened with walking through the “Tenby” garden, which, as Pauline had borne witness, contained no grass whatever.

Just behind her was a small boy, sitting very firmly on a little red tricycle.

“Hello!” said Hugh; “very glad to see you, I’m sure. Friends who look you up in the low ebb of the hours before breakfast are friends indeed. Come along up, both of you, and tell me your names.”

But Lynn stood loyal and steadfast at the foot of the steps, while she put the first necessary and searching question that was his due.

“Have you had whooping cough?” she said.

Lynn looked very much relieved.

“What a good thing!” she said. “It is very seldom you get it twice, so we shan’t hurt you.”

“No,” he said gravely, looking down on them, “you really don’t look as if you would hurt me—much. But won’t you come on the verandah? And can the gentleman alight by himself?”

Lynn came up the steps a little shyly.

But Max, though he got off his tricycle, looked a bit worried.

“He won’t stand,” he said. “Will you lend me your hank’fust to tie him to the post? he’s a lood horse.”

“He means a blood horse,” explained Lynn in a low tone; “he always pretends his tricycle is a race-horse.”

Hugh lent the handkerchief—even offered to assist in the tying.

“I’ve no grass,” said Hugh; “but did you never try him on white daisies? It wouldn’t do, of course, to feed common horses on them, but a blood steed like yours, why, it would make his coat shine like varnish.”

Max’s eyes grew brilliant at the notion, and he rattled his charger up to a bank near, that was white with the flowers, and stuck the thing’s head into it and fed him with handfuls of petals.

“Why, why,” he shouted, “he’s getting shinier every minute—and his mane’s growing longer and longer.”

From that moment he regarded Hugh as a man and a brother.

But Lynn had got to business.

“No,” she said when offered a chair—“oh, no, thank you, we can’t stay—Miss Bibby doesn’t know we’ve come. But will you please deal with Larkin?”

“Deal with Larkin?” Hugh repeated.

“Yes, he’s Octavius Smith, not Septimus, and much better. Mamma deals with him, and his bacon is only elevenpence, and he’ll always bring your letters, too.”

“Bacon!” said Hugh, hungrily. “I’d deal with any one who has bacon if it is fried and eggs are thrown in with it.”

By dint of a few questions Hugh put himself in possession of the facts, and found out that his visitors were also his nearest neighbours. He discovered, too, that he would have been called upon by the whole quartet, but that it had been considered, in family conclave, that four was perhaps too great a number for a morning call. And further, it was necessary for Miss Bibby to see some figures about the garden. So the question was solved by drawing lots, which fell, greatly to the disgust of Pauline and Muffie, to Lynn and Max.

“I know you’ll go and spoil it all,” said Pauline. “I could do it so much better.”

So Lynn was on her mettle and fought hard in Larkin’s cause.

“Oh,” said Lynn, “Miss Bibby!” She was torn between Larkin and duty.

“Oh, of course, we’ll go and ask permission first,” said Hugh; “and we might leave Trike behind, eh, Max? After a feed like that he’ll want a rest.”

Away they went out of the gate and across the road.

Miss Bibby was down at the gate, fluttering with vexation. She had just found out that two of her naughty charges had actually dared to go and trouble the sacred peace of the famous novelist, and before he could have breakfasted!

She positively could hardly keep the tears back.

A GROCERY ORDER

Miss Bibby had been awake nearly all the night, her blood at fever heat.

Hugh Kinross a stone’s-throw away! Hugh Kinross, the author of Liars All, and In the Teeth of the World, and other books, that had thrilled her and set her nerves tingling as if a whip had been applied to her back!

No book had ever so agitated her as Liars All. And she had paid it the highest compliment in her power—she had flung aside her political novel, and the historical one that she had been touching up, and the detective tale that she had been copying afresh, and she had started feverishly upon a short story that she had entitled Hypocrites. And she had tried desperately to “lay about her with a bludgeon,” and say biting, savage things of hypocritical human nature, and hold a relentless mirror up to its little faults. Kinross would have been convulsed could he have seen it.

And she would meet him—she could hardly help meeting him. Possibly she would never get so far as knowing him to speak to, but she would see his tall, spare figure moving slowly about the verandah as he wove his plots, and perhaps the shadow of his head on the blind of a lighted window far into the night.

The fever in her blood drove her from bed. She got up and bathed, and dressed herself with the punctilious care she always bestowed upon her toilet.

Over the choice of her morning dress she hesitated a moment. She wore dainty washing blouses, and neatly-cut serge skirts as a rule; but this morning something induced her to don a limp lavender muslin that took all the freshness from her cheeks.

But then she missed Max and Lynn. And after a world of trouble dragged it from Pauline that they had actually gone across to “Tenby” to try to induce Hugh Kinross to give his orders for bacon and such things to Larkin.

Hugh Kinross and bacon! Miss Bibby ran down to the gate almost choking with agitation and distress.

There was a figure crossing the road, with Lynn held by the hand, and the red tricycle, and Max flanking it on the other side. It was a figure of merely medium height, more than a trifle inclined to stoutness, with an ordinary kindly face and shrewd eyes. He wore a white linen suit, creased all over with bad packing, and a soft shirt with a low collar. When he took off his old Panama hat, Miss Bibby saw, quite with a shock, the bald patch at the back of his head.

That was all. Not another word, though Miss Bibby, going over and over again in her mind the great meeting, tried hard to imagine that she had forgotten some notable thing he had said. Then she began to torture herself with fears that she had behaved stupidly. The suddenness had been too much for her; she could not recollect one solitary thing that she had said except a fluttering “Certainly,” when he asked permission to take the children with him. What must he have thought of her?

Ah, if it could only happen over again when she should have had time to collect her faculties and make some brilliant and scathing repartee as the women in his books so frequently did. But then again, what chance had his speech offered for repartee? What kindling of conversation could there be when the only tinder provided was—eggs and bacon?

She worried herself to such a degree that when breakfast-time came, her appetite, usually small, had almost reached vanishing-point.

The cause of her flutterings was striding along the red dusty road, Lynn and Max having all they could do to keep up with him.

And Lynn was unwittingly merciless to the temporary occupant of her mother’s place. When Kinross had asked her if it was Miss Bibby who was up so early and walking among the trees, she volunteered, in addition to the affirmative—which would have been quite enough—that she walked about like that when she was doing some of her deep-breathing exercises. And that after her deep-breathing exercises she always skipped backwards for five minutes, and after the skipping she lay down flat on the floor and kept lifting up her head in such a funny way.

But now they were at the shops and Lynn and Max were greatly excited.

They pointed out the different places to him.

This was Benson’s, and he made the most delicious drop cakes that ever were; they always bought some when they were going for picnics, and gen’ally on a Saturday, when Anna had no time to make cakes, they had them again. Hugh was solemnly warned not to be beguiled into dealing with Dunks. Dunks did give, it was true, nine for sixpence; but then Pauline had measured them once with Miss Bibby’s tape measure—measured them “longways, and broadways, and fatways,” and Benson’s had been fully half an inch superior.

These were the two photographers. It was advisable to deal with this one, for he always gave you the whole tray down to choose from when you went to buy picture post-cards, and the other man didn’t, ’cause he was afraid your hands were dirty. But they never were when you went for a walk, only Max’s sometimes, because he still fell down a lot (this point Max contested hotly).

And these were the grocers. Poor old Septimus Smith would have stirred uncomfortably in the dreams that still held him, could he have heard Lynn and Max vigorously advising Burunda’s latest stranger never on any pretence whatever to buy as much as half a pound of butter at his establishment.

And Octavius, sleepily sweeping his shop and doing the manifold duties of little Larkin, who was fast nearing the poor selection for his dearly-earned holiday,—Octavius would himself have been amazed at the number of good points his business had. His currants—how much cleaner than the currants of Septimus,—his bacon—words seemed inadequate to describe his bacon. He gave you a whole penny box of chocolates each when you went with Anna to pay his bill. He saved you the tinfoil from his tea-boxes and the lovely paper ribbon off the boxes of raisins.

Hugh heard again about Blanche and Emma and the piano, and the rapt vision of the buying up of both the Smiths, and the future conduct of one grocery business only by a person of the name of Larkin.

Octavius was speedily wide-awake.

He had always liked the Judge’s children, and took a special interest in Lynn, who had composed the following song for him:—

But this was beyond everything good and thoughtful of the child. And as to Larkin, who had obtained her interest so well—well, the lad should have a “thumping” commission on the order.

The old man’s hand began positively to shake as he wrote and wrote at the order.

It was Lynn who suggested everything, with Max occasionally coming in with a brilliant thought like “hundreds and lousands of laspberry jam.”

As for instance—soap. “Yes, you will need soap,” Lynn said; “how much? Oh, I think you always order grocery things in half-dozens.”

“Half-dozens be it,” said Hugh.

“Well, all I’m particular about,” said Hugh, with a twinkle in his eye, “is that it shall be prime middle cut and elevenpence a pound.”

“Just the very thing I make a speciality of!” cried the old man marvelling.

Finally the order was complete; it took two pages of the order book. Octavius would have to borrow Burunda’s one cart to deliver so tremendous an order; the usual thing was for Larkin to carry goods in a basket on horseback.

He would have to go over to his brother Septimus and borrow some things,—asparagus, for instance; he never kept more than two tins at a time of so expensive an article. And pepper—his whole stock of pepper at present was but three pounds!

“The Premier” came back after he had gone a step or two.

“Look here,” he said, “just wrap me up some of that bacon and a few eggs, and I’ll take them with me now. We’ve nothing for breakfast at our house.”

Half-way down the hill again, Lynn, speechless with the thought of telling Pauline and Muffie about her brilliant success, Max, a little depressed—he could never walk before breakfast without feeling very large and hollow inside—Hugh, blandly holding to him the parcel of eggs and bacon, met an unexpected sight—Kate toiling along up the steep grade on her bicycle.

“He-he-he!” giggled Lynn; “look at that funny fat woman on a bicycle.”

“It’s only a lack bicycle,” said Max critically, “mine’s led.”

The funny fat woman got off in a most agile fashion when they came alongside.

“My dear Hugh!” she said, “and I imagined you still sound asleep. What on earth are you after now?”

“Eggs and bacon,” said Hugh promptly, “and you can just come home and fry them for me. Exercise must wait for a more suitable time.”

“We have ordered it,” said Hugh—“six pounds of it. My little lady friend here informs me that it is the correct thing to order groceries in half-dozens. I like doing the correct thing, though a doubt did cross my mind as to the advisability of laying in six pounds of pepper.”

“Six pounds of pepper! Oh, Hugh, you are joking.”

She looked helplessly at Lynn.

But Lynn’s sensitive little face was scarlet; she had called this bicycle lady “a funny fat woman,” and here she was a friend of this very nice man’s.

She did not know whether to gasp out an apology or remain silent. The latter course commended itself, however, to her, as it ever does to children.

“You don’t mean to say you have given a grocery order without consulting me, Hugh?” insisted the lady.

“Just a little one to see us over to-day,” said Hugh. “Half a dozen ox-tongues, half a dozen bars of soap—I forget the rest. I thought they would come in useful.”

“It is prime middle cut, I assure you,” said Hugh seriously.

“I am going up to cancel your ridiculous order,” said Kate determinedly, preparing to mount. “I shall explain to the storekeeper that you are not responsible for your actions.”

“You are going home to fry my bacon,” said Hugh, as he whirled her bicycle round; “if you don’t I swear I’ll sit down here and eat it raw.”

LETTERS TO A MOTHER

One morning, not long after this, there came to Miss Bibby at “Greenways” a letter from Thomas Bibby in the city.

Thomas, after he had finished being brought up by these ladies, surprised every one by his faculty for business. They took him in his eighteenth year to the editor of an evening paper who was known to them, and begged that he should be received into the office to gain an insight into literary life, as they hoped in a few more years he would become a novelist.

“No, I can’t,” said Thomas, who hated all things literary. Then his sulky look vanished and his eyes brightened. “But I tell you what I could do—go and straighten out the poor chap’s accounts.”

“Here,” said the editor, “you’d better go downstairs, my fine fellow, and ask Mr. Gates to give you a stool in the office.”

So Thomas became a valued clerk in the counting-house. And presently when a foolish, feminine speculation swept away the income of the sisters, Thomas established himself as guardian of their bank-books, and general business man of the family.

The sisters, though a little money was still left, decided to take situations as governesses and companions, telling each other it would widen their outlook on life, and give them experiences that might prove invaluable in their literary work. Judge and Mrs. Lomax felt themselves fortunate when Miss Agnes Bibby, with such unquestionable credentials, appeared in answer to their advertisement for some one to take charge of their family during their absence.

And now came a letter from Thomas in the city to Agnes at “Greenways”:—

Miss Bibby, after reading this letter for the third time that day, hastened into the dining-room where the children were awaiting her, a red spot on her cheek, and a hole burning inside her sleeve near her elbow, where, being pocketless as any modern woman, she had tucked the letter.

“Pauline, Lynn, get out your pens this moment;—no, Muffie, you must write in pencil, you have spoiled the cloth with the ink you have spilled;—yes, yes, in a minute; Max, you sit here, dear, on the nice high chair, and then you can reach beautifully.”

Max firmly refused the nice high chair, which he long had considered beneath the dignity of a man with a pocket, and had to be established as usual on two or three fat music books placed on a “grown-up” chair.

There were no regular lessons during the holidays, but Mrs. Lomax having said vaguely, at leaving, that she hoped the little girls would not have quite forgotten their scales, and how to write and read, before the governess returned, Miss Bibby had considered it her duty to see to these things.

So she exacted half an hour a day at the piano from each of the little girls, and faithfully sat beside them saying: “One, two, three, four, don’t droop your wrists, Lynn; one, two, three, four, count, Pauline; one, two, three, four, thumb under, Muffie.”

“My dearest Mummie and Dad,” wrote Pauline this afternoon, “I played my Serenade through yesterday without one single solitary mistake.”

Then she looked up with trouble in her eyes.

“Miss Bibby,” she said, “you know just where you turn over and the chords begin, are you sure I didn’t play D flat there, instead of D natural?”

Miss Bibby started guiltily; as silence had settled slowly down over the room her thoughts began to drop nearer and nearer to her elbow.

“I don’t remember, dear,” she said; “didn’t I praise you—didn’t we say you could tell mother that you had it quite correct at last? Yes, I remember quite well.”

“‘My dearest Mummie and Dad,—I played my Serenade through this morning without one single solitary mistake perhaps.’” Oh, how the wretched word pulled one up, tarnished the brilliant achievement!

“Pauline, you cannot have finished; sit down,” said Miss Bibby.

Pauline shook her head gloomily. “I can’t write yet,” she said; “I think I’ll just go and play it over once more to be certain. That might have been D flat.”

“Oh,” said Miss Bibby excusingly, for the Serenade was long, like the lay of the Last Minstrel. “Mother won’t mind, dear—just say you played it very well, and I was much pleased.”

But Pauline shook her head wretchedly.

Lynn was wrestling with her first page.

“‘Dearie mother, we don’t cough so mush’ (how do you spell cough, Miss Bibby? There’s a horrid g or q in it somewhere, I know)—‘I don’t smudg so mush.’ I wish (Oh, dear, you said we oughtn’t to say we wished she’d come back, didn’t you, Miss Bibby, cause she might stop enjoying herself? What else could I put after ‘I wish’? I’ve got that written).”

“Suppose you say you wish you could write better,” suggested Miss Bibby.

“I suppose that will have to do,” said the little girl sadly. “No, I’ll tell you, ’cause I don’t much want to write better, I’ll say I wish words would ryum better. Look at beauty, nothing will go with it but duty, and duty is such a ugly word in a song, isn’t it?”

“No, I think it is a beautiful word,” said Miss Bibby; she expected herself to say this, and was not disappointed.

“Well, I don’t,” sighed Lynn. “I could have made a lovely song this morning. It began—

but I couldn’t go any farther, ’cause there was nothing to ryum but that horrid duty.”

—something like that, you know, dear.”

finished Lynn discontentedly. “No, I didn’t want it to go like that; it was just going to be a springy sort of a song, with wild birds in it, not a lessony sort.”

“Well, get on with your letter, my dear,” said Miss Bibby, who was often helpless before the fine instinct for the value of words with which Lynn had been gifted.

So Lynn continued in a cramped hand, “I wish there were more nice words—duty won’t do.”

This was a sentence calculated to puzzle even parents intelligent as Judge and Mrs. Lomax imagined themselves.

Then the child turned over to her “free” sheet, on which she might write and spell as she pleased, and gazed at it wistfully.

What a tragic thing this was in her hand, this red pen with the end sucked nearly white, so powerful, so powerless!

“I love you,” she wrote, and then covered a line or two with black crosses, that meant a passion of kisses. Oh, to catch at all the words that were surging in her heaving little breast, and to force them down on the white sheet, and to send them away red-hot across the sea!

She dipped wildly in the ink, she breathed hard and held the pen in almost a convulsive way. But the pitiful steel thing only spluttered, and left a few lines of black scribble. Could the mother understand that? Ah, perhaps, perhaps.

“I hop you are well, from Lynn.”

And so concluded the bi-weekly letter, with a big tear as usual, for Lynn simply could not write to mother without crying a little, though for the rest of the time she was a merry little grig.

After a time the Serenade began to get upon the nerves of all the room.

Eleven times did poor Pauline attack it and eleven times did she have a breakdown. It was not always the D flat that caused the downfall, though Miss Bibby found herself listening with nerves a-stretch every time the difficult bar approached. And she felt inclined to cry with thankfulness everytime the child went smoothly past. But then just as surely as her nervous tension released itself, and she began to comfort herself that the concluding page could not fail to go well, a stumble, a slip, a despairing cry from the piano stool, and the whole performance began again.

“Oh, make her stop, Miss Bibby,” implored Muffie; “she intrupts me dreadf’lly, and I’m in the middle of telling about the fat lady that rides on a bicycle.”

“I’m getting all my chalks mixed up with her intlupting me,” he complained, looking angrily towards the piano where the devoted Pauline still battled madly with the Serenade.

“Pauline, my dear child, I shall go out of my senses if you play the thing again,” Miss Bibby said desperately, as Pauline for the twelfth time began the clashing chords that opened the piece, and served as contrast for the gentler music of the Serenade itself.

“I’ve—I’ve sworn to myself to get it right,” said Pauline wildly. Her lips were quivering, her eyes were full of tears, her very hands were shaking with weariness.

“You shouldn’t swear,” began Miss Bibby.

“The butcher does,” volunteered Max.

“I—I mean it is wrong to bind oneself by a promise one may not be able to keep,” Miss Bibby added hastily. “And you are not to talk to the butcher, Max. Shut the piano now, Pauline, and another time when you are quite calm——”

“I’ve got it w-w-written,” sobbed Pauline, fighting with the keys through a mist of tears.

“You can easily start another letter,” said Miss Bibby distractedly; “don’t mention your music this time—your mother won’t mind.”

At this point Anna stalked into the room.

“Which I’m quite aware it isn’t my place, Miss Bibby; but I’m here to look after the children as well as you,” she said, “and them down with whooping cough that dreadful they can’t eat potatoes, and getting punished like this till the very kettle in the kitchen is ready to scream, and the Missus don’t believe in punishing, no, she don’t, and it’s a good deal longer I’ve lived in the fambly than some people, and knows the ways better, and the tears streaming down the poor child’s face like you never saw.”

Pauline had quivered once or twice during this heated speech, but as it finished she crashed on to D flat yet again, fell off her stool on to the floor, and rolled about screaming with laughter.

Even Miss Bibby was forced to smile a little, for Anna was plainly suffering keenly, and had bottled it up for some time.

“You mean well, Anna,” she said quietly, “even if you don’t express yourself well. You can put on your hat and take the children to the waterfall; it will do you all good, for it will be cool down there. I will go to the post, lock the side door, and put the key under the mat.”

And Miss Bibby, the letters under her arm, was buttoning her gloves inside the gate, and settling her veil for the walk up to the township.

ACROSS THE RUBICON

But Larkin came along, Larkin, his auriferous hair glinting in the sun, Larkin, with his empty grocery basket swung on his rein arm, and a sheaf of papers under the other.

Larkin came along. And the whole course of Miss Bibby’s life was thereby changed.

“Good-morning, ma’am,” said the boy; “anything I can fetch yer down fer tea?”

“No, thank you,” said Miss Bibby.

“I’ll post yer letters for you,” continued the youth; “I’m going straight back.”

Miss Bibby reflected a moment.

It would certainly save her some time if he did so, and she had nothing now to do until tea—yes, it would give her a chance to read Thomas’s letter once more, and consider things quietly.

“It’s a bit ’ot, walking,” Larkin said encouragingly. She handed him the letters.

“Put them in your pocket,” she said, “and be sure to post them very carefully.”

“Well, perhaps I could do with a tin of sponge fingers,” said Miss Bibby softening.

“Thank you, Miss Bibby, ma—am, twopence,” said Larkin, digging his heel into his horse and flying off. Twopence represented his commission; of course, without knowing it, he was falling into the habit of calculating it aloud.

Miss Bibby walked slowly back along the path, and with one slender white hand drew out again from her sleeve the agitating letter from Thomas. Again she read it steadily. Again she walked back to the gate, thinking deeply.

Actually at the gate she lifted her eyes and looked, with a quivering sigh at “Tenby,” blinking shadeless in the afternoon sun.

The thing was impossible, of course. Not for anything in the world could she march up to that dread door and calmly propose to interview its almost sacred tenant.

Yet what a chance it was—in very truth the chance of all her lifetime! To have a story in print and paid for, she had craved this during all the long years that separate fourteen from thirty-six.

And this time the higher position disclosed a view of the cottage not obtainable from the big gate. And this view included a little side verandah. And the little side verandah included Miss Kinross, her ample proportions disposed upon a small rocking-chair,—Miss Kinross amiably engaged in eating bananas, and reading a penny woman’s paper in the hope of finding therein some new dish with which to tempt Hugh’s appetite.

How very ordinary she looked, how very good-natured and stout!

Sudden and brilliant ideas came more seldom to Miss Bibby than to the children she was “care-taking.” But undoubtedly one seized her now. The author himself was plainly either out, pacing a mountain top as he worked out his ideas, or else shut up securely in his study.

What if one threw oneself on the mercy of the stout, kindly-faced lady over there and implored her aid in the delicate task!

Miss Kinross looked annoyed; few of us like to be caught by a stranger when we are tilted well back in a rocking-chair eating bananas in our fingers instead of upon a fruit plate and with orthodox knife and fork.

“Oh,” said Miss Bibby, “pray don’t be vexed; pray forgive me, it must seem unpardonably rude, but I—I——” She put her hand to her throat a moment, too agitated to continue.

Miss Kinross laid down her banana skin and rose to her feet, rapidly disarmed.

“It is Miss Bibby, is it not?” she said, holding her hand out with her most pleasant smile. “My brother told me your name; now where will you sit, do you like a low chair? try this one. It is kind of you to look us up so early.”

Miss Bibby sat down still struggling with her agitation.

“I,” she said—“I—not a visit—should not presume—an author’s time—I came simply to ask a favour of you—so great a favour I—simply feel now I am actually here that it is impossible to ask it.”

“But first,” continued Miss Kinross, “we will have some tea. Now don’t say you have had yours, if there is one thing I dislike it is drinking my afternoon tea in solitary state.”

No, Miss Bibby had not had tea; Thomas’s letter and the Serenade together had put even her severe afternoon drink of plain cold water out of her head.

But when Miss Kinross made a favour of it like that, how could she refuse to receive a cup when the maid carried out the tray?

“Yes,” she said to the query about sugar, and “Yes” to milk. And “Yes, fairly strong,” when asked how she liked it. No one would have dreamed it was more than six years since her last cup.

Miss Kinross gave eager sympathy. That was nothing, nothing; many authors now famous had been declined again and again.

“Seven times?” asked Miss Bibby, with gentle mournfulness.

“Certainly,” said Miss Kinross stoutly. “Why, look at Hugh, it is his favourite boast that there isn’t a publisher in England who has not refused him at one time or another; nor one who wouldn’t be glad to accept him to-day.”

“Mr. Kinross—refused!” echoed Miss Bibby. Her world seemed in need of reconstruction for a minute. Then a strange warmth and comfort gathered about her poor heart. This made the author less terribly aloof, less altogether impossible to question if she should have the happiness of obtaining an interview.

She put her request at last very timidly to her new friend.

“Do you think he would give me an interview—just a very, very short one?”

But now Kate Kinross was perturbed.

“But just a very, very short one,” pleaded Miss Bibby. She went on to tell Kate about Thomas’s letter, the editor’s offer, this chance of a lifetime for herself.

Kate almost groaned.

“Five years have I kept them off him,” she said, “five whole years, and not one interviewer have I even allowed to get across the doorway! And you would have me plot against his peace like this!”

Miss Bibby urged no more, just sat still and swallowed heroically once or twice, and then said smilingly that it “didn’t matter at all.”

But Kate’s keen eyes were on her all the time. Something about this slender woman with the grey, half-startled eyes, and the soft mouth that quivered so easily, and the soft, thin cheek where the pink pulsed to and fro as rapidly as in a young girl’s, touched her curiously.

She stood up at last and put a hand on her visitor’s shoulder in a hearty, encouraging way.

“My dear girl,” she said, “come along, you shall have your chance. He had his, I’ll remind him of that. He will probably never forgive me, but I will risk that. Come along.”

“Certainly now,” said Miss Kinross, “this minute. Why not? He’s only in that room across the hall.”

“Oh, oh,” gasped Miss Bibby, “I—I must have time—I—I daren’t—Oh, Oh—don’t knock at the door—for Heaven’s sake.”

Kate laughed and drew back one moment.

“My dear girl,” she said, “he’s not in the least brutal, as he seems from his books. You couldn’t meet with a more harmless man if you hunted for a year. Don’t you be alarmed—why, you silly girl, you are actually trembling! He is nearly as stout as I am, and much more good-natured, and you’re not afraid of me. Now, come along.”

She opened a door without knocking and put in her head.

“Hugh,” she said, in as bland a tone as she could call up, “I have brought a lady to interview you for the Evening Mail. I have assured her you will not object. Well, I shall see you again in half an hour, Miss Bibby.”

THE INTERVIEW FOR THE “EVENING MAIL”

Kate could hardly have chosen a more inopportune moment. The hero, who had troubled Hugh’s repose in the moist atmosphere of the city, persisted in behaving in an untoward fashion, even when translated to an altitude of three thousand feet or so. He still perorated, still posed like a shop-walker, still behaved like a puppet, with its pulling strings in plainest evidence.

It was a mercilessly hot afternoon. All over the mountains the tourists were asking themselves in bitterness of spirit why they had left their comfortable homes in the city to subject themselves to weather like this. They all had the feeling of being wronged out of their money; the hotel-keepers, the house-agents, had lured them here under false pretences, and positively deserved punishment.

Two hundred words a day! He used to spend much of the early part of January leaning back in his chair, happily planning out the accomplishment of two or three books which had long been in his head, but which want of time had hitherto prevented from getting as far as his writing-block. Yes, he determined (in January) that it was more than possible to have the whole three finished by next December; he was not married, his time was his own, he could order his days as he pleased, and turn night into day, and day into night, exactly when he chose. Why, when the good moods came, did he not write five thousand words a day, easily, eagerly! And this steady writing of a couple of hundred words a day would bring the good mood often, no doubt.

Yes, he would finish the three books this year—the subjects were all to his hand—and possibly the play he had had tucked away in his mind so many years. And some verse, too—the luxury of verse was very dear to him.

Brave January with the sun of resolution flaming high in the sky!

It was December now.

The poet might have as truly spoken of the facilis descensus to December as to the torrid region he mentioned.

It was December and the publisher was clamouring for copy. In the proud insolence begot of January’s shining possibilities and Kate’s neat memorandum, Hugh had promised his book by August.

And the long-suffering, kindly publisher, sympathetic over an author’s mood, had refrained from overmuch pressing of his claim for three months. But it was December now and he was growing restive; the MS. had to be typed, had to waste five weeks at sea, to be read in London, to be placed as advantageously as possible for serial rights in various countries, to be illustrated, to be printed, proofs had to be sent out for correction, to be returned, ten more weeks had to be lost at sea, and yet the book be published in the sacred season of autumn, nine short months hence.

The publisher was restive and Hugh desperate.

One at present reposed, sole upwards, on a chair where it had alighted after a vigorous aërial flight, and the other stood its ground in the middle of the floor.

And this was the manner of author Miss Bibby found herself suddenly shut up with for an interview destined for the Evening Mail!

Hugh spun round in his chair at Kate’s bland voice. He probably imagined he was in his revolving-chair at home, but he was not, and the frail article beneath him, unused to gyration upon one leg, gave way instantly and all but precipitated him at full length before his visitor.

Max, who an hour before had impugned the butcher’s impurity of language, would have found that in some respects a butcher and an author were men and brothers.

“I have startled you, madam,” said Hugh, facing the “limp lavender lady” as he had called her to Kate; “and I ought to apologize, I am aware, but I don’t. I would have apologized had I been betrayed to it in a drawing-room. But this is my work-room, where I see nobody.” The last four words were almost thundered.

Agnes Bibby was praying—actually praying for courage. Her throat was working, her grey eyes had their most startled look. She was twisting her hands nervously together.

Hugh was not in the least conscience-stricken at her evident lack of composure.

He seriously considered for one second the expediency of repeating the word, and adding a few others to it, and so scaring the lavender lady out of his room and out of his life for ever.

But then he noticed she was actually trembling, and though his savage impulses were still well to the fore, he dragged up a chair and said “Sit down.”

Miss Bibby sat down uncertainly, still gazing at him as if half expecting he might pounce on her and eat her at any second.

“And now what incredible thing was it I heard my sister say?” he asked.

“An interview! And my sister—my sister, Kate Kinross—is party to it!”

“She was willing to help another woman,” said Miss Bibby.

“Ah,” said Hugh, “I see, the two of you have plotted together to entrap a defenceless man.”

Miss Bibby ventured on a faint smile, for the author was certainly smiling now. How was she to know, as Kate might have done, that it was his dangerous smile?

“Well, I hope you are going to forgive me, and grant my request,” she said.

“And if I don’t—if contumaciously I refuse?” said Hugh.

Surely Miss Bibby’s prayer for courage was answered. She looked him gently in the eyes.

“I should try again,” she said; and when he laughed at her fluttering audacity, she actually added, “and still again.”

“I see, I see,” he said, “I’m plainly powerless. Well, ‘if ’twere done at all, then ’twere well it were done quickly.’ Fire away, Miss Bibby; just regard me as a lamb led to the slaughter.” There was a twinkle in his eye so demoniac that Kate would have been truly alarmed.

“Oh, don’t mention a trifle like that,” said Hugh urbanely; “permit me to lend you my fountain-pen”—he handed it to her—“and, this writing-block, is that sufficient paper?”

“Oh, quite,” she said gratefully.

“Now then,” said Hugh, and he leaned back in his chair and lowered his eyelids over his wicked eyes, “I will answer any question you like to put to me.”

“How good you are!” breathed Miss Bibby.

Then there was a dead silence in the little room.

“Well,” said Hugh, opening his eyes, “why don’t you begin? It cannot be that compunction has suddenly seized you, I fear.”

The woman’s grey eyes wore their startled look again, there was the pink flag of distress on her cheeks.

“Possibly,” he said with smoothest courtesy, “I may be able to help you. It would be a pity to let such trifles prevent you from earning money. I presume you will be paid for this?”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Bibby, “I am offered six guineas for it.”

“Ah! And you need the money?”

“Well, I am not actually in want of it,” said Miss Bibby, “but——”

“But you could do with it, I see; most people can, can’t they? Well, let us get on. You want to know all about my private life, don’t you?”

“Oh,” said Miss Bibby, shocked. “I should not like to intrude like that. Just simple questions, I—I think they generally ask where you were born.”