“Well,” said Hugh, looking pensively around his work-room, “I am a man of rather curious habits. I may say my habits have become part of my nature. Certain spells are necessary to get me into proper vein for my two hundred words. For instance, my collar—you may have been surprised to find me collarless, Miss Bibby.”

Miss Bibby hastily expressed the sentiment that nothing he could do could surprise her; then saw the difficulties of the sentence, and grappled hard with it to reduce it to a polite form that should express the fact that a great author is above all the petty bonds that bind the rest of the world, and must be expected to act accordingly.

But Hugh was evidently not listening to her.

“Most authors, I believe,” he said, “when working, wear their collars in the place intended by nature—or should I say the manufacturers?—namely, around their neck. I cannot write one word until it is in the corner of the room.”

Miss Bibby made a note of the curious fact.

“And, mark you,” said Hugh impressively, “it has to be the left-hand corner, facing the door, or the charm won’t work.”

“How very strange!” murmured Miss Bibby.

He was regarding sadly the one of his own that stood in the middle of the floor.

“Oh, an author’s shoes,” murmured Miss Bibby.

“Well then, curious as it may seem to you, that, too, has become one of my spells,” said Hugh, “my feet unfettered beneath my table. One shoe a little pointed to the right in the middle of the room; another, sole upwards, on a chair three and three-quarter feet distant from its fellow.”

“Absolutely remarkable!” gasped Miss Bibby. She looked at him, a pencil poised a little hesitatingly. Was this thing possible? Was the great author then not quite, quite——she hardly liked, even in thought, to use the word sane?

“Oh, of course,” said Hugh diffidently, “the fact may not seem worth mentioning in your article, but it is my experience that there is nothing which so endears a celebrity to his public as his little eccentricities.”

“You are quite right,” said Miss Bibby, “perfectly right, and indeed you are very, very good to make them known to me.”

“Oh yes,” said Miss Bibby, “that will be very interesting.”

“Well,” said Hugh, carefully fitting the finger tips of one hand on to the tips of the other, “I rise at a quarter to five, winter and summer, and get a cool two thousand off my chest while yet my fellow men are buried in slumber. And——”

“Excuse me,” said Miss Bibby, “I don’t quite follow—two thousand what, Mr. Kinross?”

“Words, of course,” said Hugh.

“B—b—but,” hesitated Miss Bibby, “I thought you said two hundred a day.”

Hugh blinked a moment.

“My dear Madam,” he said, “you have doubtless heard me called a stylist. Every one of those two hundred words I erase five to ten times, polishing, substituting, seeking to express myself better.”

Miss Bibby was writing fluently again.

“This,” said the author, “occupies me until half-past six, when I take three baths, one hot, one cold, one—like the church of the Laodiceans—neither. This stimulates me marvellously.”

Scratch, scratch went the fountain-pen.

Scratch, scratch, the pink cheek flag deepening with pleasure.

“On my return I go through a short course of exercises for the muscles, answer a few letters while I am cooling down, and then breakfast.”

“It must be eleven o’clock by then,” ventured Miss Bibby.

“Eleven o’clock it is,” said Hugh, after a moment’s consideration.

“And for breakfast,” said Miss Bibby. “Do you—do you eat ordinary things? It would be so interesting to know.”

Hugh was about to instance eggs and bacon in exaggerated quantities, when he realized that they were much too gross for such a paper. So he shook his head.

“I attribute my perfect health and clear and active brain solely to the cautions I observe with my diet,” he said slowly. “No meat, no drinking at meals, no bread, no puddings. There are excellent substitutes,” he picked up negligently from his desk a small packet that had been sent—an advertisement sample—to him by the morning’s post, and had not yet been disposed of.

“In conclusion,” he added, “I am a strict teetotaler, and I never smoke.”

Then it occurred to him “Greenways” might have seen the red end of a cigar on the “Tenby” verandah, and he added, “except an occasional cigar under medical orders.”

He rose from his chair and gazed pensively at his black socked feet.

Miss Bibby fluttered up at once, handed back his pen, and hurriedly tore off from the block her last written sheet.

“I can never, never thank you enough,” she said, and held out to him a hand that somehow pleased him, and made him compunctious at the same time—such a white, slender, gentlewoman’s hand it was.

But then he remembered his hero had not yet proposed, and assuredly would not to-day after such an interruption. He told himself that she had deserved all she got, and that she would, at all events, earn the six guineas she was so eager about.

“Oh, don’t mention it,” he said gallantly, and turned her over to Kate, who was just coming along to satisfy herself that actual murder had not been committed.

She fluttered back one moment, however, just as he was closing the door.

“Oh, have they?” he said. His fountain-pen was in his hand. “Where shall I put the signature? I suppose you will copy all this out again; suppose I write on this blank slip?”

“That will do nicely,” she said.

“I guarantee this to be an authentic interview, Hugh Kinross, his mark,” he scrawled lazily across the page.

When he took his seat at the tea-table that night Kate came behind him and kissed the top of his head, an unusual mark of affection, for they were an undemonstrative couple in general.

“Dear old Hughie,” she said, “you have given delight to more than one person.”

“I believe I have, K,” he said genially.

ANNA ENJOYS ILL-HEALTH

“Anna,” said Miss Bibby, with happy eyes the next morning, “I am going to take a whole holiday to-day.”

“An’ about time,” said Anna, “I’ve been wonderin’ how long you could keep it up, Miss Bibby. You’ve not had one yet, and me half a dozen. I don’t have half as much to do with those childerun as you, but if I didn’t get away from them sometimes I’d get hysterics.”

“I am sure they are very good children—wonderfully good, Anna,” said Miss Bibby.

“Oh yes, they’re good enough,” said Anna, “but so uncommon lively. And talk! They keeps it up, one after the other, and sometimes all four at a time, till your head spins round like a top. I got quite giddy goin’ down to the waterfall with them yesterday, and it wasn’t the steps, neither, it was just their tongues going at it, clackerty-clack all the time. What time will you be back, Miss Bibby?”

“Working him a pair of slippers, I’ll undertake,” ran Anna’s thoughts. But aloud she said, “Yes, you do, Miss Bibby. I’ll keep them youngsters away from you; you get a good rest while you’re about it.”

The heartiness in her tone was due to the fact that she was about to ask for an extra special holiday for herself in a day or two to attend the Mountain Bakers’ picnic at a distant waterfall.

So Miss Bibby disappeared into her room for the day, after having written down the children’s meals in her painstaking fashion on the kitchen slate, and given the tradesmen’s orders, and seen the children happily engaged in their favourite game of Swiss Family Robinson.

Anna sighed with relief; gentle as Miss Bibby was she had a way of keeping people up to the mark, and on a warm day like this, a well-executed policy of “letting things slip” appealed to the imagination.

Miss Bibby came back a moment.

Anna undertook the commission.

“Don’t know what I’m thinking of; I forgot my own doses,” she muttered as she went to the dining-room for the bottles. Max had been ordered a pleasant preparation of malt to fortify his little system during his convalescence, and Lynn an iron tonic. The other two were making such excellent recoveries nothing was needed.

Anna reached the two bottles from the cupboard, measured out with a steady hand a tablespoon of the malt, and swallowed it, then followed it by a teaspoonful of Lynn’s iron. She looked at herself in the sideboard mirror as she did so. “I don’t think I’m looking any better,” she said mournfully.

Anna keenly enjoyed the worst of health.

She was an anæmic-looking girl with a pasty complexion, and hair several shades too light to correspond comfortably with it.

Ill-health was the only subject in life in which she took a genuine interest.

And never did an advertisement offer free a sample bottle of any drug, no matter for what purpose, but Anna sent instantly and claimed it.

It needed nothing but the announcement on Max’s malt bottle of its tissue-building qualities, and its power of restoring the waste of nature in the human frame, for the girl at once privately to take a course of the same treatment and, as the chemist’s bill might have testified, from the same bottle.

Similarly with Lynn’s tonic; the accompanying pamphlet said something about its invigorating powers and the restoration of red corpuscles to the blood, so Anna at once prescribed it for herself also—out of Lynn’s bottle.

Miss Bibby had certainly been vaguely surprised at first at the rapid lowering both of the children’s medicines and her own tins, but never dreaming of suspecting so unusual a cause, soon grew entirely accustomed to it, and imagined it was the normal consumption.

Her own constitution thus fortified, this morning Anna called loudly through the window for Max and Lynn to come in this instant and take their “medsuns.”

Max came eagerly; he was so fond of his treacley spoonful it was a marvel he had not of his own accord jogged some one’s memory and insisted upon the omission being rectified.

But Lynn’s tonic embittered life for her for a considerable time before taking, as well as for several minutes afterwards, until a long drink and a chocolate removed the nauseous taste.

She was playing this morning, before Anna’s call, in a mood of chastened joy.

“’Tend you don’t hear; it’s only Anna,” said Pauline in swift sympathy.

Lynn flattened her body along a bough and drew up a possibly betraying leg.

“Do I show?” she whispered.

Paul shook her head, and moved with Muffie hastily away from the tree and began to run towards Anna, who, failing to obtain her quarry with a shout, was now seen rapidly coming to the Island of the Robinson family, late of Switzerland.

“Anna,” shouted Pauline, one of the most resourceful young people in the world, “have you seen Lynn anywhere?”

Anna pulled up.

“No, I haven’t,” she said.

“Are you sure she’s not in the house?” persisted Paul.

“If she is and heard me calling, I’ll give it to her, or my name’s not Anna,” said that maiden irately.

“Do you think she can have gone again over to ‘Tenby’?” pursued Pauline.

And with this frightful threat Anna returned to the house.

Poor Fritz nearly fell out of “Falconhurst” in his agitation.

“Oh, I think I’ll go up and take it, Paul,” she said; “two doses together would be too awful.”

Her eyes grew round with horror at the mere thought.

“You could shut your teeth hard, after the first spoonful,” said Paul, “and refuse, firmly refuse more.”

“You could spit it out,” said Muffie eagerly, “like when they gave me the castor-oil; and it was the last in the bottle, so they couldn’t give me any more.”

“But there are gallons more in my bottle,” Lynn said dolefully, “and you heard what she said about putting it down my back.”

This was marvellous perspicacity of thought; Lynn looked admiringly down at her sister, and Muffie stood, with her mouth open, digesting this freshly-minted fact, and making clear resolutions for all future consequences of green peaches.

They fell to playing again, Lynn remaining in the tree, however. Mrs. Robinson now engaged in sewing skin coats with a porcupine needle and flax, since the more active part of Fritz, shooting and shouting down below, was fraught with too much danger.

“I can’t make Tentholm, ’less I have the diny-room tablecloth,” said Muffie.

“Well, go and get it,” said Pauline.

“All right,” said Muffie, making a line for it, then calling back, just as a little sop to duty, “she said we weren’t to, though.”

“Run up and ask her,” said Lynn, a law-abiding little person so long as the iron did not enter her soul or body.

Muffie dashed into Miss Bibby’s bedroom after the briefest knock, and made her request.

But Muffie had sprung away again, and what she had to avoid with the cloth, whether tearing it into holes, or getting mud on it, or losing it, or wetting it, she did not wait to hear. It is possible Miss Bibby did not even finish the sentence—her eyes looked absent-minded enough for such a lapse.

Muffie went gleefully back to Robinson Island, the art-green serge trailing behind her.

“We can have it, we can have it!” she announced gleefully, “only we’re to be careful not to—come on, fasten it on to the sticks, Paul.”

Miss Bibby had reached the chronicle of Hugh Kinross’s “endearing little eccentricities.”

A small pile of neatly written sheets lay to the right of her. In front of her lay more sheets, scored through, corrected, polished, until Flaubert himself would have been satisfied with the labour bestowed.

She had worked steadily through the night, the silent night in the hills, her lamp the only household eye still open in miles of black slumbering country.

The envelope that would hold it would hold also her destiny, she told herself. This was the most important crisis of her life; she had travelled nearly forty years—thirty-six to be exact—along a road of life, not rough and stony as many a road is, but just dull and level and monotonous and dusty, as are so many excellent highways. But now she stood at two crossroads, and saw stretching before her one in no wise different from that she had traversed so long, and the other a glittering tempting path springing joyously up a high hill, on the top of which, in the shade of laurel trees, sat at ease the whole goodly company of great authors. She fancied they were beckoning to her; she heard sweet voices from them throughout that feverish night—“Come up higher, Agnes Bibby,” they were saying.

The interview was the first step along this second path. The story, already promised space for, would be the second. And then, from out the bitter gloom of the trunk, the novels would emerge, one after the other, the world graciously holding out its hand for them.

“Oh, dear,” sighed Miss Bibby, “what is it now, Max?”

Max entered with a wool door-mat depending from his collar and just reaching his shoes.

“I have no tail,” he said, his lip drooping, “an’ Paul an’ Muff’s got late big long ones.”

“Oh, dear!” said Miss Bibby, after a frantic glance round her own apartment in search of an appendix, “I have nothing that would do, Max. Do run away, darling. Pretend you’ve got a tail, that is just as good.”

Max gulped threateningly.

“Laindeers have leal tails,” he said.

Again a frantic glance around. “Would a towel do if I pinned it on, dear?”

Max shook his head.

“In the lawning-loom lere’s a tail on the curtains,” he said, “but it’s showd on tight.”

“Well, ask Paul, ask Anna, ask some one else to look for something for you; but you mustn’t come to me, darling, this is Miss Bibby’s holiday, you don’t want to spoil it for her, do you?” Miss Bibby looked at him beseechingly.

But Max’s lip drooped lower and lower. Outside in the garden pranced Muffie and Pauline, a long tasselled drawback from the dining-room curtains, sweeping magnificently after each of them.

But Max, after a heart-breaking attempt to remove the drawing-room tie-back, which some over-provident person had stitched firmly in its place (as if anticipating unhallowed use being made of it), Max had gone bursting with his woes to the one who held his mother’s place.

“Please run away, darling,” said Miss Bibby again.

But Max sank down to the ground, and lifted up his voice in a bitter howl.

“Mamma—I want my mamma,” he yelled, as if he thought that by pitching the key high his voice might sound across the watery waste that separated her from him.

Miss Bibby was not proof against this; in fact it is just possible that Max had long since discovered that this mode of appeal was the most successful one he could essay.

She kissed and comforted him and, holding his hand, went out of the room in search of some article that would lend itself to the present necessity.

Max dragged her to the drawing-room.

“Cut it off,” he said, temptingly, “you’ve got lissors.”

But Miss Bibby had established herself as anxious caretaker of the household chattels as well as children.

“Oh, darling!” she said, “I couldn’t possibly. Mamma’s pretty tie-back to trail in the dust!”

“I wouldn’t lail it on the paths, only on the lass,” said Max.

But Miss Bibby still shook her head, and Max began to work up from low down in his breast another howl.

Then Miss Bibby had a brilliant notion. She caught sight of a length of rope hanging on the verandah post, relic of a hammock that had gone the way of most hammocks.

“Where is a knife?” she said, “and run and get me a comb, Max.”

In five minutes she had half a yard of the excellent material beautifully unravelled, and Max was crazy with pride and eagerness to burst out upon the envious gaze of his sisters thus caparisoned.

He could hardly wait for the realistic affair to be fastened firmly to his belt, but kept saying, “be quick, be quick, Miss Bibby.”

“I think I deserve a kiss, Max,” she said wistfully, holding the eager little man a moment to her; this baby of the family had made himself a very warm corner in her heart.

“How much do you love me, darling?” persisted the misguided lady.

Quite conceivably Mrs. Lomax was in the habit of putting this question also, but had learned the wisdom of confining it to sleepy and leisure moments, and not obtruding it upon the strenuous time of play.

Max struggled away. “Big as th’ sea, big as th’ stars, big as this loom, big as anything,” he said hastily. It was his customary formula after this troublesome question.

“You dear little boy!” said Miss Bibby, kissing his soft young cheek. Then he shot away through the door, and she went back with rapid steps to the collar habit of Hugh Kinross.

MISS BIBBY’S HOLIDAY

Miss Bibby worked another half-hour, perhaps. She was nervous and excited; she had set herself to catch the four o’clock post, and there still were numbers of pages with which she was dissatisfied. She was essaying, indeed, an impossible task—trying to couch Hugh Kinross’s eccentricities in dignified English prose. And the shoes, at least, absolutely refused to be so treated; they seemed to stand out from the article just as prominently as they had stood out among the furniture of his room.

Miss Bibby sighed despairingly—the strain and the loss of sleep were telling upon her.

“Miss Bibby,” shouted Pauline, bursting into the room, “Miss Bibby, Miss Bibby!”

“Run away,” said Miss Bibby; “run away at once, Pauline. Surely it is not much for me to ask to have one day—just one day to myself.”

“Quick, quick!” cried Pauline, “Muffie’s stood on an ant-bed, and she’s swarming!”

The child’s condition was piteous; absolutely mad with terror and pain, she was rushing about on the path, Max, yelling with sympathy, tearing after her. Lynn, at the first frantic moment when she saw her sister’s high white socks turned black with their live covering, had leapt towards her and, with hands and pinafore, had essayed to sweep the things off. But the assailants were as alarmed and angry at their position now as the attacked and, while some sought safety by running up Lynn’s sleeves, thus forcing her also to dance and scream, the remainder swarmed higher and higher up the luckless Muffie.

Miss Bibby’s presence of mind quite deserted her. The whole of her note-book seemed to zig-zag vainly across her brain—her note-book where she had carefully written down antidotes for any poisons the children might swallow, remedies for scalds, burns, cut fingers, sprains, snake-bites. There was nothing about ants! Yet something must be done and instantly—the feet were the worst.

“Quick, quick! give me your foot, Muffie,” she cried.

And Miss Bibby with her slim white hands seized the shoe—the shoe all black with its fierce, prickly living mass—unlaced it and dragged it off. Her own arms were alive in a moment, but she merely bit her lip and began to pull at the sock.

“What insanity of folly!” cried Hugh Kinross, sweeping her nearly off her feet, “here, where’s the bath-room?”

Pauline dashed on to lead the way, and Hugh ran the two afflicted little girls hurriedly before him with one hand, and Miss Bibby grasped firmly by the shoulder with the other.

Once in the room, he turned on the three taps, hot, cold and shower, all at the same time, and followed this by dropping both children into the water.

“You’d better follow them,” he said, for Miss Bibby was fidgeting about as if afflicted with St. Vitus’s dance in her arms and shoulders. “Is there any ammonia in the house? Never mind, I’ll go across and get some from Kate.”

He strode away and Miss Bibby did not lose a minute in following his advice.

“Here’s the armonia, Miss Bibby,” she said, going into the bath-room, “and you’re to—to pollute it with some water and rub it on hard. Here, will I be doing, Miss Lynn?”

The children were gasping and gurgling now with laughter at the funniness of the whole affair, and even Miss Bibby was smiling a little at the drowned appearance of all of them.

She applied the ammonia to the bites, then left Anna to help the children into dry clothing, while, having carefully ascertained that Mr. Kinross had quite gone, she ran along the passages to her own bedroom, a limper lavender lady than ever.

While dressing she peeped between the laths of the blind, agitated, now the disturbance was over, to think of the sudden arrival of Hugh upon the scene. What a masterful man he was! How he had grasped her shoulder and pushed her along! But, oh! how stupid—how stupid he must have considered her for not thinking of water for the poor children herself! Yes, he had called it an insanity of folly! She peeped mournfully through the blind.

And Kate came after and kissed him good-bye!

Was his holiday, then, over? Was he going back to town? Oh, no, of course! Had not Lynn said he was going to the Jenolan Caves for a week with his other sister and her party? But Lynn had not said anything about those very pretty girls! Miss Bibby sighed, she knew not why, as the wagonette drove away.

Then, in a mood from which all buoyancy had fled, drowned probably with the ants in the unexpected bath, she began to work at the interview again.

A mile along the way Hugh gave an exclamation of annoyance; not so strong certainly as the one Miss Bibby had overheard, but still indicative of much vexation.

“I went expressly to ‘Greenways’,” he said, “to deliver a communication, and that ant business drove it out of my head. I’m really afraid I shall have to turn back.”

The ladies protested a little. Was it very important? As it was they would barely make the first twenty-five miles of the journey, and reach the first hotel of their route before dark.

“Yes,” said Hugh, really perturbed, “it is important—rather. I’m afraid I’ll have to go back.”

But at the critical moment Larkin appeared—Larkin who had a perfect genius for appearing on the spot when he was wanted.

“Hello! here’s Middlecut to the rescue,” Hugh cried, hailing him with a shout. “Hi, young man, can you go off on a message for me?”

Larkin grinned and nodded assent. He had no notion why the book gentleman always gave him this name of Middlecut, but he had also no objection. Any gentleman who made his commission advance by leaps and bounds, as this one had done, was at liberty to call him any name that came handy.

Hugh had his fountain-pen, but no further vehicle for his message; none of the ladies could help him with as much as a visiting card—what help in emergencies can be expected from pocketless persons?

Larkin came to the rescue with the eternal card of Octavius Smith and his bacon at elevenpence.

A minute later the wagonette was gaily upon its way again, Hugh in excellent spirits now he had laid the little demon of compunction that had been troubling his kind heart since breakfast.

And Larkin was cantering happily down to “Greenways,” his own pocket (he kept his right-hand pocket for the money due to Octavius, and his left-hand for his own tips) the heavier by a shilling.

“Miss Bibby, Miss Bibby!” cried Pauline.

“Larkin is at the door,” said Pauline, “and he’s got something for you from Mr. Kinross.”

“Where, where?” said Miss Bibby, fluttering forward. Larkin passed the card to Pauline. Pauline passed it to Miss Bibby—and on such small things does our destiny hang—the wrong side up.

That is to say the nauseating statement about the prime middle cut at elevenpence a pound was what met the eye of the eager Miss Bibby.

An ebullition of anger such as rarely visited the gentle lady rose within her now.

She flung the card angrily into the fire.

“You are a very rude little girl, Pauline,” she said; “it is excessively ill-bred to play jokes upon people older than yourself. And as for Larkin——”

But Larkin had disappeared, his shilling being earned, and some business urgently needing his attendance.

Hot and perspiring after several brilliant efforts, that included hanging by the feet, and swinging upwards again, and resuming the perpendicular, Pauline climbed up and sat on the bar, holding to a post and dangling her legs.

From here through a break in the trees she could see the hill, and climbing up it steadily, steadily, Miss Bibby with her long precious envelope for the post tucked beneath her arm.

IN BLACK AND WHITE

Four days later Kate was reading, rocking and eating banana again in the privacy of the little side verandah, when there came a familiar tramp across the room behind her.

“It can’t be Hugh,” she said aloud, for it had been allowed by the whole party that the seven days of a week were not too long to devote to the thorough “doing” of the marvellous caves.

“By George though, can’t it?” said that gentleman as he came through the doorway, dropped his bag on one chair, and sat down heavily on another.

Kate laughed at him outright; his linen suit was red over with fine dust, dust lay half an inch deep on the brim of his Panama, his very eyebrows were red with the molecules of the mountain roads.

“But I thought they were such wonderful girls,” said Kate amusedly; “‘ducky little girls’, you called them, and ‘little pets’.”

“That’s all very well,” said Hugh; “little pets are very nice in their place, and no one appreciates them better than faithfully yours, for an hour or so. But when you get ’em for breakfast and lunch and dinner. And they even insist upon trifling with the holies of your smoking times, trying to light up cigarettes themselves, and jabbering all the time, why then you seize on a civil offer to risk your neck in a racing car as a drowning man would catch at a torpedo if he found it floating handy.”

“You seem to have returned heart-whole, at all events,” said Kate; “and I’ve had my suspicions of you.”

Kate laughed. “Then I’m afraid you don’t feel much better for the change,” she said.

They had both hoped that a week’s “junketing” with lively companions might bring back the pen’s good hour.

“Better!” he groaned, “why the day you let that Bibby woman loose on me I was a flowing river compared to my mood to-day.”

At that a recollection evidently came over Kate, some memory that the unexpected arrival had driven away, for she froze visibly.

“I will go and make you a lemon-squash,” she said coldly; “you are possibly thirsty.”

“Thirsty!” said Hugh, “my outward and visible dust is nothing to what I’ve swallowed! Make me six lemon-squashes. But what’s the matter, Kit?”

She made no answer, merely turned one severe glance on him and went off to the pantry.

But Kate preserved a stony silence; she even picked up her book again and affected to read. He drew the volume out of her hands.

“I pray thee, Rosalind, sweet my coz, be merry.”

“I don’t feel as if I could ever be merry again with you, Hugh,” she said.

“And here have I,” he said, addressing the verandah ceiling, “passed through dangers enough to make me loved, Othello-wise, for themselves alone. Dangers of culverts, dangers of sharp turnings, dangers of blue metal, of precipices, of wandering cows, of naphtha explosions. Here have I turned myself into a demd damp moist unpleasant body just to get to her sheltering bosom and she repulses me like this.”

“It is because I am what I have never been before, Hugh,” said Kate, “and that is ashamed of you.”

“Which is entirely attributable,” said Kate, unable to resist keeping up the vein, “to the gross misconduct and most improper behaviour of Mr. Mantalini.”

“Of me, my essential juice of pineapple!”

“Of you, Sir!”

“Will she call me, Sir!” cried Hugh, “me who doat upon her with the demdest ardour! She, who coils her fascination round me like a pure and angelic rattlesnake! It will be all up with my feelings; she will throw me into a demd state.”

“Hugh,” said Kate, “it is far too serious a matter for nonsense. I consider it was not only unkind but unmanly.”

“My cup of happiness’s sweetener,” said Hugh, as he took out his pipe and his tobacco and his matches with much deliberation. “You brought it upon her yourself and she has you to blame.” He filled his pipe with tobacco and rammed it well in. “It will be a lesson to you”—he struck a match—“and I trust to her”—he tilted his chair back and puffed once or twice—“to let an inoffensive man go on his way unmolested. And now my sweet Rose, my dear Rose, be merry.”

“What!” thundered Hugh, and he brought his chair so suddenly and heavily back to its four-legged condition that the frail thing responded with an ominous creak. “What on earth do you mean?”

“Didn’t you know she was going to sign the interview with her own name?” asked Kate, glad to find there might be some extenuating circumstances.

“You don’t mean seriously to tell me she’s gone and published that fool of an interview?” Hugh shouted.

“I do seriously so mean,” said Kate.

“Go and get me the paper,” he said.

Kate brought him the Evening Mail of two days back.

And there in black headlines he read—

“The only interview Hugh Kinross has ever granted.”

“A lady beards the lion in his den and extracts most interesting particulars.”

“The eccentricities of a great author.”

When Agnes Bibby’s neat MS. had reached the Editor of the Evening Mail that gentleman had fairly shouted with laughter, for he knew Kinross and his habits well. And this perfervid and most serious account was in truth very funny.

But things move rapidly in the office of an evening paper, and the foreman ran through the first proofs and the sub-editor through the second, and neither thought of removing that poor little name at the end.

And now the article was two days old and quite famous. There had not been a copy left of any of the editions.

“By George!” he said; “by George, Kate! That’s rough on her.” He breathed hard. “Do you think she has seen it yet?”

“Seen it!” said Kate, and her voice actually choked a little. “The poor girl is breaking her heart over it. I have never known any one feel anything so acutely. Of course she must have realized it was all a joke the moment she read the Editor’s facetious comments. And then it seems she has a brother in the office, and he has written to her a brotherly letter explaining elaborately how she is the laughing-stock of the whole town.”

“By Jove!” repeated Hugh; “by Jove!” He seemed quite stunned. “Have you seen her yet, K? Does she seem at all cut up?”

“Seen her!” repeated Kate, her mouth a-tremble with sympathy. “Yes, I went over at once, and she saw me coming and ran this way and then that to get away from me. And when she couldn’t she just dropped down against the bank on the lawn and sobbed and cried as heartbrokenly as Muffie might have done.”

“I say!” said Hugh. He gulped a lump from his throat. “I say!”

“Bless the boy!” said Kate, wiping her eyes. “I know he didn’t mean to hurt the poor thing.”

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE INTERVIEWER

He could hardly wait to ring the bell; the front door was open and seemed to suggest that he should stride in and march directly to the room from which children’s voices were coming and where the victim of his brutality most likely also was sitting.

But he thought better of such behaviour and loudly rang the bell.

Anna came down the hall, evidently trying to restrain a giggle at his dusty appearance.

“Is Miss Bibby in?” he demanded sternly.

Anna looked uncertainly at the sitting-room door. “I—don’t know for certain. Will I go and see?”

“Yes, immediately, please,” said Hugh.

She did not ask him in at once: instead she took a few steps to the sitting-room door, opened it, giggled at the children, smoothed her face and turned round again.

Hugh strode into the sitting-room.

“Well, you’d think he’d wash hisself afore he came calling on a lady,” said Anna to herself as she went in search of Miss Bibby, “an’ brush his dirty hat. If that’s what making books brings you to, give me bread,” and she sent a loving thought to a certain dapper baker of her acquaintance.

In the sitting-room Pauline had screwed herself round and round on the piano stool till her knees were higher than the keyboard and she was able to contemplate her Serenade from a new point of view. She looked at Hugh in some excitement but without speaking.

Lynn, Muffie and Max had evidently been at work on their letters, but had all evidently pulled up suddenly, for each displayed a blot as a full stop.

Max was the first to recover himself. He remembered he had a use for this man.

“Did you ling me a lalagmite?” he demanded.

“Oh, yes,” cried Muffie, “our stalagtites,—did you break some off? We knowed a boy that got one in a dark cave when the guard wasn’t looking and pushed it up his sleeve to carry. Did you?”

At this question Paul began to revolve faster and faster on a downward journey simply to save herself the embarrassment of answering, and Lynn fell to writing a new sentence in her letter with great assiduity.

But Muffie had no qualms.

“She doesn’t want to see you, and she said we could talk to you and she wasn’t at home,” she answered.

“But she doesn’t know yet who it is,” objected Hugh.

“Yes she does,” said Muffie, “she sawed you coming up the path.”

“An’ she lushed out of the loom,” volunteered Max.

“Well,” said Hugh, “she’s got to see me, for it’s very important. Will you go to her room, Muffie, and say Mr. Kinross begs to see her as a special favour?”

“Oh,” said Muffie, “she isn’t in her room. When you say you’re not at home you go and stand out in the garden till the visitors go.”

“You don’t,” argued Lynn, “only Mrs. Merrick; but mother says ‘No,’ an’ she never does, an’ it just means ‘engaged,’ only it’s not so rude.”

“I really couldn’t,” said Lynn distressedly. “I’m very sorry, but I’m sure she wouldn’t like me to.”

“Very well,” said Hugh, “I shall simply go and find her myself,” and he pushed up the French window and stepped out into the garden.

“We gen’ally hide ahind the waratahs or the bamboos, or up a tree’s a good place,” said Muffie, much interested.

If it were hide-and-seek about to begin, this is where Max shone. He laid down his pen and slipped down from his chair.

“I’ll find her for you,” he said. “I find licker than any one. Once I found Paul an’ she was lapped up in the sheets in the linen less.”

But Hugh had made off towards the bamboos without any help. He could see a moving dress beyond the loose striped leaves.

At the sound of footsteps on the gravel the skirts moved rapidly away.

“So!” he said to himself. “Very well, Miss Bibby, it’s not dignified for persons of our age, but you’ll give up this chase before I do.”

“You’re in for it now, my fine chap,” Hugh said to himself, “and she’ll weep—she’s just the sort to weep. Well, you jolly well deserve it, you brute.”

Then he walked up to her.

She wore a dark blue cambric to-day with a soft leather belt and dainty white muslin cuffs and collar as a relief. The costume suited her infinitely better than the limp lavender had done.

The colour was ebbing and flowing in her cheeks; her grey eyes wore their startled expression. But she held out her slim hand, albeit it trembled a little.

“Good-morning, Mr. Kinross,” she said, “slightly pleasanter weather, is it not? Though I rather expect a thunderstorm, and then perhaps that will be the end of heat waves this summer. What do you think? Must we expect another?”

“Er——” said Hugh, “I really don’t know.”

“Mrs. Lomax writes that it is delightful in New Zealand just now—just like fresh spring weather all the time. Both she and the Judge are feeling better.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Hugh, “but——”

“Miss Bibby,” said Hugh, “I did not come to talk of Pink and White Terraces to you before I removed the dust of my journey. I want to tell you how sorry——”

“I would rather talk of the Terraces, Mr. Kinross,” Miss Bibby said, with a gentle dignity of manner that surprised him. But her soft lip quivered one moment.

“And, by George, Kate,” he said afterwards, recounting the interview to his sister, “I nearly kissed her on the spot—just like I do you when I’ve been ramping round and have hurt you and want to make up. She was taking it so gamely.”

“But I must talk of it,” he insisted. “What a low ruffian you must consider me! I——”

“Oh, no,” she said, “I—I quite understand now. I was importunate and at an infelicitous time. I recognize that I brought it upon myself. Well, people will forget about it presently—a new sensation will come along,” she smiled faintly.

She only looked at him very gently and without speaking.

“Don’t you remember my coming up here—four or five days ago now? I was coming to tell you to burn the stuff, and then you know one of the youngsters stirred up an ant-bed and drove it out of my mind.”

“Yes,” she said politely; “oh, yes, that was quite enough to put it out of your head.” But she looked away from him.

“Then, as you know,” pursued Hugh, “I have been at the Caves ever since. But I took the precaution the moment I remembered to send you word.”

Now she was looking at him. “I received no message.”

“That scoundrelly young Larkin—do you say that he did not bring you a note from me?” he cried.

“No, I had no note,” she said faintly. “He must have lost it or have forgotten to bring it.”

“That is it,” said Hugh, “but I still blame myself. I ought to have turned back when I remembered and not have trusted a lad.”

Yes, there was Larkin, riding gaily off down the path to the gate, an empty basket swung on one arm. He had just received another commission from Anna—a large bottle of patent medicine and a complexion remedy, and as he had lately extended the field of his operation by acting as a sort of travelling agent (on commission) for a chemist in an adjoining village, it brought the piano and the grocery emporium a little closer.

Hugh gave a peremptory whistle and the boy looked over his shoulder, then responded to the beckon by bringing his horse sharply round and cantering briskly across to the waratahs.

“Something else, Miss Bibby, ma’am?” he said, whipping out his order book.

“What do you mean by not delivering the note I gave you from the wagonette on Thursday?” said Hugh angrily.

“I did deliver it!” said Larkin in much indignation, “which I can say honest, sir; I never neglected a message yet. And that’s why our business is what it is.”

“Whom did you give it to?” said Miss Bibby. “Was it to one of the children?”

“But that was no letter,” said Miss Bibby, a faint recollection stealing over her, “it was one of your trade cards.”

“It was on one of those I wrote,” said Hugh, “having no other paper. I remember apologizing for using it.”

“And I burnt it!” said Miss Bibby in a stricken tone. “Tossed it on the fire without a glance—I thought they were playing me a trick! Poor Pauline—I—must apologize to Pauline.”

“You can go,” said Hugh to Larkin, “and here’s a shilling to wipe the momentary slur off from your character.”

And Larkin rode off, vindicated, slapping the left-hand pocket of his trousers.

“Does it make my crime a little less brutal?” said Hugh gently.

She put out her slim white hand again.

“Let us forget about it,” she said; “I shall soon live it down.” Her eyes flashed for a moment bravely up to his.

He gripped her hand hard, shook it several times, and told her she had behaved in a manner altogether more generous than he deserved.

The humble, anxious note in his voice would have amazed several score of his readers who had written to him to ask him, since he was a literary man, to read through an accompanying bulky parcel of MS, advise about its faults and give hints about publishing. For these persons—anathema maranatha to all authors—received by return of post one of a large packet of printed slips that stood ever ready on Hugh’s desk, and learned briefly that “Mr. Hugh Kinross, being neither a literary agent nor a philanthropist but merely a working man with a market value on every hour, begs to repudiate the honour his correspondent would do him, and informs him that his MS will be returned on receipt of stamps to cover postage.”

“This story,” she said quite tremulously—“Oh, I am so anxious, so very anxious about it. The editor of the Evening Mail—has promised to use one of mine; it will be—well, not quite my first story in print, but certainly the first one paid for. There is such a difference, isn’t there? Nearly any one can get a story into print if they want no remuneration. You can understand how anxious I am that it should be good. I sent it to be typed in town so that it would present a better appearance. It has just come back by the post. Oh! if you could spare time to glance at it. Is it too much to ask?”

He laughed at her. “A bit of a story like that—three thousand words at the most! You are too modest, Miss Bibby. You should have brought me a packet weighing about half a hundredweight as the rest of them send me.”

“No, no;—just that I am pinning all my hopes on Hypocrites.” A wave of pink was in her cheeks, her eyes shone softly.

“With the greatest pleasure in life,” said Hugh heartily, and tucked the little roll beneath his arm. “And now I had better go and wash my face, or Kate will be coming after me with a sponge and towel.”